The concern about privacy on the Internet is increasingly becoming an issue of international dispute. Citizens are becoming concerned that the most intimate details of their daily lives are being monitored, searched and recorded. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 81 percent of internet users are concerned about threats to their privacy while online. With today's growing use of computers and the internet a whole new world know has cyberspace has taken shape. .
This electronic environment does not obey the same rules as the physical environment within which we live. People now have the opportunity to access an infinite array of information or to communicate with people on earth or in outer space. The technology for this world is progressing at a profound pace and it seems as if something revolutionary is being implemented all the time. But along with this innovative technology, in a world of few regulations, come many opportunities for infringement upon user's rights that were implemented in the real world. Computers and the internet are merely tools to access this median between users and the massive amounts of information available.
A poll conducted in the March 1999 Business Week magazine showed that 57 percent of the respondents said that the government should pass laws that modify how personal information could be collected and used on the Internet (Encyclopedia Britannica). The attempt to pass complete privacy legislation in the United States has been disturbed by the fact that those who will benefit from privacy are scattered while the corporate opponents of privacy are well organized. .
The topic of internet privacy is an interesting topic to cover in that today so many people utilize the internet which causes a need for the regulation of peoples" individual freedoms in cyber space. The internet is so popular that anything having to do with it directly or indirectly affects us all.