This week’s readings are Sanderson (2009) AND Abe (2009).

For this week’s post, I want you to think about these questions:

  1. Do employers have the right to know what their employees do when they are not working? Why or why not?
  2. Can these cases with professional athletes (Sanderson, 2009) can be applied to (or compared with) other types of employees — such as lawyers, teachers, advertising sales reps, etc. Why or why not?
  3. Are there ethical problems with this kind of “crowdsourcing” (Sanderson, 2009)? If so, what are those problems?
  4. Should people be concerned about the location tracking capabilities discussed by Abe (2009)? Do these technologies have negative aspects?
  5. Does Sanderson’s article (and his cases) prove that Abe’s worries are well founded? Why or why not?
  6. Is the typical college student’s participation in Facebook an example of Abe’s “peer surveillance”? Why or why not?
  7. When you think about Abe’s claim that “every aspect of our communication via those media can be easily traced back and stored” (p. 76), does this seem good to you, or bad? Why or why not? Consider the idea that everyone is monitoring everyone else.
  8. Does Abe’s argument about hospitality make sense to you in the context of online surveillance? Why or why not?

Your deadline for posting is Monday, Nov. 29, at 11 a.m.

SLUG: The TITLE of your blog post this week must include the word “privacy.” Please use additional words to make a sensible title.

Content of the post: After you have read BOTH assigned articles, choose any four (4) of the questions above and answer them. Devote roughly 100 words to each answer (write an approximately equal number of words in each answer). Please be sure your answers make it clear that you have read and understood the ideas in the two articles. It must be clear to me which question(s) you are answering!

If you need any clarification about this assignment, please make a comment on this post. I will answer it here.

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