However, the issue of privacy versus freedom of information has been with us forever. In world history, the recognition of privacy has deep roots.(2) The Qur’an (3) and the Bible (4) contain numerous references to privacy. Jewish law has long recognized the concept of freedom from being watched.(5) There also were protections in classical Greece and ancient China.

Privacy defined

Privacy is the interest that individuals have in sustaining a personal space free from interference by other people and organizations. It is a balancing act between the needs of individuals and society’s demands. There is a fine balance between the need for individuals to protect their privacy and the contending pressures of business, government, and the exigencies of modern life.

There are three main issues and areas of concern: How much other people may access our personal information, how much access should we have to our private information that is held by others, and how much access we should have to public information. Privacy, a topic of special concern to social scientists, is a complicated issue that cannot be discussed fully within this short article.

Even with the adoption of legal and other protections, privacy violations remain a concern. Beyond these obvious aspects of privacy, several important trends are contributing to privacy invasion, such as globalization (removing limitations to the flow of data), convergence (leading to the elimination of technological barriers between systems), and multimedia.

Types of privacy

Intuitively, privacy can be categorized into four separate but related concepts.

Privacy of communications or interception, which involves individuals desiring to communicate with other individuals and organizations through secure and private communications, whether these be mail, telephone, e-mail, or otherwise.

Privacy of the person, which is concerned with the integrity of one’s physical body and protection of one’s physical self against such invasive procedures as compulsory immunization, blood transfusion without consent, genetic tests, compulsory provision of bodily fluids and tissue samples, and drug testing.

Territorial privacy, which involves setting limits on intrusion and all aspects of behavior into the domestic and other environments, but especially with regard to various sensitive matters in both private and in public places (e.g., searches, sexual preferences and habits, political activities, religious practices, video surveillance, and ID checks).

Information privacy or privacy of personal data, meaning the establishment of rules governing personal data collection and handling. People claim that personal data on credit history, as well as medical and government records, should not be available automatically to other individuals and organizations.

The volume of instantly recorded information based on credit card usage, Internet visits, hospital or pharmacy visits, filing tax returns renting video tapes and so on’all of which can be accessed by authorized and unauthorized persons’has changed the speed and ease with which others can survey much of one’s personal life and activities.(6)

Types of surveillance

Identification. With the advent of microprocessor technology, such a card’s type, function, and integrity vary enormously. ID cards could embed biometric information, defined as the process of collecting, processing, and storing details of a person’s physical characteristics in order to identify and authenticate.

In recent years, the underlying technology interests governments and companies because, unlike other forms of ID, they now can include such new information as digital fingerprinting, handprint scans, hand geometry, thumb scans, facial recognition technologies, voice authentication devices, electronic retinal scans, and such other biological markers as DNA identification.

Thus security personnel also will be able to identify more accurately those people accessing buildings, computers, or national borders.

Communications. All companies that develop digital telephone switches, cellular and satellite phones, and other developing communication technologies build in surveillance capabilities.(7) Nearly every country has some form of eavesdropping capability as regards telephone, fax, and telex communications for the use of law enforcement or intelligence agencies. 

Internet and black boxes. Internet surveillance is a revolutionary new technology that allows remote monitoring of an e-mail address and the contents of an e-mail message.(7)

A related effort for enhancing government control of the Internet and promoting surveillance is being conducted in the name of preventing ‘cyber-crime,’ ‘information warfare,’ or ‘protecting critical infrastructures.’ A number of countries are demanding that ISPs install ‘black boxes’ that can monitor system traffic.

In short, black boxes contain specialized software programs that run in a computer hooked into the network at a location where it can monitor system traffic. These sniffers can monitor the entire data stream by searching for such key words, phrases, or strings as net addresses or e-mail accounts. Network administrators can take screen shots in real time or on a schedule, by time and day or user, and store them for future review; run any program installed on a remote PC; shut down or restart any remote workstation; and view a list of applications stored on all network PCs, the frequency of Internet usage, and more.

Electronic Commerce. As consumers surf and engage in routine online transactions, they leave behind a trail of personal details, often without any idea that they are doing so. Corporations monitor the huge amount of personal information (e.g., e-mail address linked to messages posted on mailing lists, from newsgroups or domain name registration data, individual surfing habits, deciphering how individual work, and building detailed profiles of where they shop and what they like to buy).

The perceived value of this kind of information is behind the stock-market valuations of many dotcom companies. Marketers and advertisers use cookies to track personal preferences as the most pervasive tracking technology. The cookie is a very small text file containing an ID number downloaded from a Web site by your browser and placed on a user’s hard drive.

Television and T-commerce

The new field of interactive digital television has a huge potential. Users can send and receive e-mail, browse the Internet, buy goods and services, and play games through their television. The industry anticipates that such T-commerce (television commerce) will enable viewers to make impulsive purchases based on what their favorite star is wearing or on individually tailored ads appearing between the plots of their favorite shows or sporting events.

Audio. Audio surveillance allows people to eavesdrop (and/or record) conversations taking place at a particular location or on a particular telephone line. Advances in technology are making it easier and cheaper to conduct covert audio surveillance. These devices come in many shapes and sizes: from micro-engineered transmitters the size of an office staple to devices no bigger than a cigarette packet that can transmit video and sound signals for miles. A magic item of modern ingenuity, each audio stream is captured and analyzed on the fly, allowing intelligence agents to perform voice-pattern matches during an intercept. It also provides the names of speakers and access to their dossiers.

Video. By now, the use of video surveillance cameras, known as closed circuit television (CCTV), to monitor public and private spaces has grown to unprecedented levels. Most towns and cities are moving to CCTV surveillance of public areas. This technology enables the observation of individuals without their knowledge at the ATM, in stores, elevators, restaurants, school hallways, housing estates, car parks, and when stopped by police in patrol cars.

In addition to the obvious security applications, video surveillance technology is being used to measure traffic flow, detect accidents on highways, monitor pedestrian congestion in public spaces, compile consumer demographics in shopping malls and amusement parks, log routine maintenance tasks at nuclear facilities, and count endangered species. The numerous military applications include patrolling national borders, measuring refugee flows in troubled areas, monitoring peace treaties, and providing secure perimeters around bases and embassies. Their use on private property is also becoming popular.(8) 

The media proclaims globalization’s advantages and disadvantages. Money flows from international lending institutions and TNCs to developing countries. Children receive an education, parents have better job opportunities, families benefit from improved medical care, and local farmers and industrialists can sell to an ever-expanding market. Countries begin to develop and climb out of debt, the quality of life improves, and children imagine a better future.

There are certain drawbacks, however. Those affected negatively sometimes seek refuge in intense nationalism or religious fundamentalism. Closer economic integration brings financial uncertainty and trans-border problems. Remember the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98? Over time, borrowed money can strangle a poor country, as in Africa. Development projects change people’s lives-and not always for the better, as illustrated by Mexico’s on-going Zapatista rebellion. National development policies can affect a region’s climate and, in the case of China with its huge population and rapid industrialization at the expense of its environment, the global climate.

Globalization has even changed our concept of time. Never has “time is money” been so accurate. Time has become an asset to be exploited, no longer a luxury to be enjoyed. Everyone wants to manage it better, to control it so that the hoped-for benefits will be attained. Now people say that the world is no longer divided between the haves and the have-nots, but between the fast and the slow.

The growing access to and use of antibiotics has spawned new drug-resistant bacteria, which means that antibiotics are becoming less effective. Moreover, some nations and groups are exploiting the wide availability of the experts’ increasing medical and technological knowledge of bacteria to produce biological weapons. Without religion’s assertions that all life is equally valuable and sacred, and that we must work together to uplift everyone, one day such weapons might be used.

To understand the advantages and disadvantages of such interconnectivity, we must analyze its impact upon our selves and our lives. This is one of the purposes of reflection and self-criticism, for these practices show us where we fit in. Many people use these tools to pursue corporate, political, national, or personal interests, whereas many others use them to pursue interfaith dialogue in the hope that tolerance, understanding, acceptance, and cooperation will spread around the world.

But the real value of reflection and self-criticism lies in helping us relate to existence and the Divine, as well as to nature and others, so that we may prepare for our own resurrection and eternal life. Once we understand that such issues remain relevant, regardless of time or place, we realize that religion was not invented by “primitive” people to explain what they could not understand.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and, as always, look forward to your comments.

ATM is currently one of the most attractive technologies in the digital data communications field. In ATM, information is transmitted in short fixed-length blocks that are called cells (Figure 1). An ATM cell consists of a header and a data field that carries the actual information-either video, voice or data. The cell header contains a label denoting the routing address.

Not only was ATM created to overcome the difficulties in existing transfer methods but also to allow the creation of a Broadband Integrated Service Digital Network (B-ISDN).

Transmission speeds up to the physical limits (e.g., 622.05 Mbps signaling rate nowadays) are achievable with ATM. By contrast, there are limitations to the upgrading possible, with the most popular traditional Local Area Network (LAN) topologies (e.g., Ethernet and Token Ring), to higher bandwidth, which means incapacity to support current and of course future real-time applications.

Although the connection-oriented ATM was initially designed for Wide Area Networks (WANs), its unique features including flexibility, scalability, high transfer capacity and support for multimedia applications, also fired the imagination of the LAN vendors in the early 1990s. Since ATM is suitable for both LANs and WANs, historical separation of traditional LANs that are connectionless and WANs that are connection-oriented will eventually disappear. This will form a universal platform for data communications as well as replace the conventional LAN topologies. With full deployment of ATM in design, manufacturing and maintenance of the future networks, the overall costs will be relatively smaller.

The traditional LANs use a shared media-access (e.g. bus) method. That means all stations of the network have to share one transmission medium and have to contend for access. The limitations of shared media-access method are overcome by the ATM’s new approach of switching systems based on central media-access management (Figure 2). Since each user has a dedicated connection to one of the ATM switch ports, users no longer need to contend for access as opposed to the legacy LANs. Moreover ATM LAN users are provided WAN services through another port on the LAN switch. On the other side, the traditional LANs have no direct wide-area capabilities-they must depend on a separate piece of equipment to convert the LAN rates and protocols into WAN-compatible format.

Problems that arise in transmission through the current networks of voice, video and data simultaneously (or in real-time) could well be prevented by using ATM.

With its low-cost networking and technology ATM will soon provide scientist and engineers greater global freedom to exchange data, images (e.g., medical imaging applications) and models in real-time. Beyond the physical boundaries of classrooms, students (especially disabled) will be able to be part of a class and interact with others just as though they were there using high-speed and reliable ATM networks.

GLOSSARY

B-ISDN: A high-speed (above 1.544 Mbps signaling rate) network standard that grew from traditional narrowband ISDN.

Connection-oriented: A network (e.g., WANs) that establishes, either permanently or on a call-by-call basis, a specific circuit path for transmission.

Connectionless: A network (e.g., legacy LANs) in which no particular path is established for the transfer of information.

Ethernet: A LAN using 10 Mbps signaling rate.

LAN: High-speed network connecting personal computers, printers, and other data equipment within an office or campus.

Mbps: Mega bit per second

Token Ring: A LAN using 4 or 16 Mbps signaling rate.

WAN: High-speed network connecting communications equipment nationally and internationally.

References

• PARULKAR G. M.: ‘Local ATM Networks’, IEEE Network March 1993, p.S-9.
• VENIERIS I. S., ANGELOPOULOS J. D. & STASSINOPOULOS G. I.:
• ‘Efficient Use of Protocol Stacks for LAN/MAN-ATM Interworking’, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications October 1993, 11(8) p.1160-1170,.
• KIM B.G. & WANG P.: ‘ATM Network: Goals and Challenges’, Communications of the ACM February 199538 (2), pp. 39-44.
• The ATM Forum: http:/ /www.atmforum.com/

The personal computer industry has created an enthusiastic, ever-growing market for multimedia technology for use in homes and businesses, the high profile of Internet (‘the data superhighway’) and continuing pressure to work and learn more efficiently have added to the demand for new concepts in education and training. The characteristics in demand are flexibility, user- friendliness and lower costs.

Ten years ago computers were command-driven and mostly used for simple tasks such as word-processing. These days graphical interfaces and user-friendly programming have revolutionized the old ‘cold face’ of computer working. Applications such as Windows, OS/2, and Mac Systems are now mouse-driven, capable of multi-tasking, and less intimidating for the novice. Computers are now used for CAD (Computer Aided Design), CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing), graphics, communication, automation, simulation, animation, and much more. Complex tasks are easier then ever before and have replaced human labour in many areas.

Development of new and better computers, local area networks (LANs). remote access software (especially ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and ISDN (Integrated System Digital Network)), using the latest in leased and digital telephone lines, have opened up new horizons in working, teaching and learning practices. These developments in remote communication systems have greatly reduced the need to travel. Wide availability of this technology has changed the working practices of some companies fundamentally. Teleworking is recognized as a practical alternative to conventional office working. Video-conferencing facilities enable direct visual and audio contact between emote offices, and almost instantaneous information/document transfer. Working from home means not having to be in the office, more control over daily schedules, the freedom to live further from the workplace, and relief from the stresses (and costs) of commuting. The company benefits from reduced office rental and personnel costs: expertise and skills can he dialled up as needed,

Reduced hardware and software costs and increased computing power have extended and popularized teleworking applications. Medical specialists can now examine patients on a screen and give advice down a phone line: just such a link-up exists between some hospitals as far apart as the USA and Saudi Arabia. It is possible to attend a lecture without leaving one’s favourite chair, while still having the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered. ‘Distance learning’ technology has especially important implications for the disabled who can access education without the stress of getting to a class or (unless they want to) facing class-mates. New York University’s School of Continuing Education is building its own Virtual College. Other institutions, such as California Polytechnic and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, are exploring similar projects.

Interactive distance learning is not just a future project. In many isolated places in the USA school children already enjoy such facilities via dial-tip modems: they do not have to travel through rain and snow any more. And getting on to the school communications network does not cost the user any more than an ordinary telephone call.

In the past, computers in schools ate into school budgets without providing any appreciable return. In companies, investments in information technology were used mostly to automate old learning processes instead of to enable new ones. All that is starting to change. Enormous growth in CD-ROM drives, LANs and Internet connections, multimedia, and collaborative software environments, is fuelling a wave of new, better teaching tools. Networking enables virtual workgroups to be set up almost instantly. There are dial-in services that permit anytime/anyplace access to course materials and fellow students.

The technology promises more than just an improvement in educational productivity: it may deliver a qualitative change in the nature of learning itself. Because computers have no feelings, they make very patient teachers, incapable of exasperation or anger: and they can work 24 hours a day. Also, because they have enormous memory capacity and don’t make choices about what to remember, they can be responsive to questioning in many disciplines. The information they can offer can therefore be multi-disciplinary, multilevelled. Multimedia interactive packages exploit this to the benefit of system users. The consequence is a dramatic change in educational methods. Instead of a one-way information flow to the learner – typified by TV broadcast, video cassette or a teacher addressing a class of students passively taking notes – the new teaching techniques are two-way, collaborative, interactive, and interdisciplinary. Multimedia enables teaching material to change from a flat, one-dimensional text to something that moves, speaks, sings, has innumerable examples and references and lines of inquiry on hand if the individual user feels inclined to follow them up. Cut- and-paste features, now more or less standard, mean the user can compose notes, essays and reports which are just as lively and varied as the source he or she is accessing.

Studies on multimedia argue in favour of its effectiveness as a learning tool. The Software Publishers Association’s 1994 report on technology effectiveness cites accounts of measurable improvements from the use of animation, video, laser discs, CD-ROM books, and hypermedia. Cognitive studies show thaw people get 80 percent of their information visually but retain only 11 percent of that. They acquire significantly less through hearing but then remember a much higher proportion of it. A combination of the two methods is, unsurprisingly, the most effective of all boosting retention rates by as much as 50 percent. Therefore, the new system of ‘Education on demand’, in homes and on-the-job, is likely to become part of everyday learning activities.

Producing educational systems and materials has long been very big business in the world. The US spends $300 billion yearly on education from nursery through high school. More than half the schools in the country now use computers in almost every discipline, and 99 percent of schools have at least one computer. According to a report from IBM Academic Consulting, American institutions of higher education have spent an estimated $70 billion on computer-related goods and services over the past 15 years; of that amount, as much as $20 billion was for teaching and learning technology. Training magazine, in its annual industry survey, estimates that US corporations with more than 100 employees budgeted $51 billion for training in 1994. Some estimates put the total spending per year by all companies and their employees at $90 to $100 billion.

The Software Publishers Association’s Report on the Effectiveness of Technology in Schools, 1990-1994, a summary of 133 studies, found that educational technology clearly boosted student achievement, improved student attitudes and self-concept, and enhanced the quality of student-teacher relationships. In this area of learning, the most promising technologies are interactive video networking and collaboration tools. Computers are amazingly diligent teachers, they can stimulate creative thinking, promote enterprise, and sharpen curiosity. Of course, availability of hardware and software is not by itself the solution to current educational problems. Reaping the benefits of available technology first requires extensive teacher training, adapted or new curricula, and, most important, changes to educational models. Modern educational concepts emphasize individualized, hands-on learning: teamwork; and guided discovery of information. All of these require technological assistance, and they are almost impossible to achieve without the help of computers. It is right to note that for teacher training and for the preparation of individually designed course materials, the latest software packages, even with relatively little preparatory training, provide the appropriate tools.

The interactive technology has made education more accessible and more enjoyable. With the help of computers educators can tailor tutoring to the individuals own needs. There is more information about any topic these days than anybody can handle. Therefore, storing and retrieving readily available study materials on computers mean teachers can focus on explaining in form at ion instead ol conveying information. The implications of this transformation affect both students and teachers. Teachers become more like coaches, while students are free to discover knowledge on their own – they can browse, pick and choose what and how, and how fast, they want to learn.

Multimedia applications include analogue and digital video, 2-D and 3- D animation, audio, and even hyperlinks and digital links: CD-ROM discs and drives, graphics display hardware and sound cards. Digital signal processors for speech recognition and signal processing are starting to appear in desktop systems and will play an increasing role in learning systems. Given the enormous growth of CDROM-equipped PCs in homes, multimedia could soon become the key ‘crossover’ application linking the home and school markets.

Instead of the conventional broadcast model of distance learning, which requires participating students to watch a live video transmission via cable or satellite links or wait for days to receive a videotape in the mail, new schemes allow students to dial in at their convenience and participate in a class asynchronously. While it isn’t in real time, the opportunity for feedback and participation is enhanced by rich two-way communications channels.

The new employee-training concept of training on demand, learning while working. promises to bring information to employees at their workstations. Training as a separate centralized department in a company may soon be a thing of the past. The changing nature and growing diversity of the work force require new kinds of training in cultural sensitivity, communications skills, and problem solving. Employees are more geographically dispersed than in the past, and staff turnover is higher because companies and employees are less loyal to each other. Hardly anyone holds a job for life. Technology is evolving so quickly that skills require frequent refreshing. Taking workers to traditional classrooms means losing man-hours, heavier training costs and less hands-on training. Also, employee-training is a risky investment, given that the employee is free, after training, to go elsewhere. Companies are therefore trying to link learning to the job itself. This can take the form of expert systems integrated into the work area or even hand-held computers connected via wireless communications to a constantly updated information base. This kind of distant’ and ‘on-the-job’ learning is significantly less expensive than transporting employees to a central location, putting them up in hotels, and forfeiting their lost productivity. If the training material is distributed throughout the Local Area Network, trainees can pick it up for themselves. This increases retention of information and decreases learning time.

The single recent advance that is making the biggest difference in training and education is the Internet. It gives everybody easy access to information they cannot find locally or even, sometimes, nationally. Via Internet anybody can access almost any library resources in the world, talk to any interest groups or obtain any information from more than 30 million users in the Internet ‘community’. Thousands of Gopher, WWW, FTP, WAIS, ARCHIE servers offer terabytes of information on every subject imaginable. One can visit virtual galleries, virtual museums, virtual schools, virtual libraries, virtual communities, shop at virtual malls – and play games.

But, but….

Clearly the new technology facilitates access to information and in doing so makes many tasks easier, more agreeable, often more exciting. However, as we are all social beings, the importance of direct contact between people in the creation of the more subtle human skills should not be forgotten. Being paid for the efficient performance of tasks is not the only reason people work; they may also need to be out at work, away from their home-base, for purposes other than recreation, and to he physically part of a team. The sharing and exchange of experience between people. both in the context of the family and the work-place, is certainly instrumental in the creation of sound, responsible human character. That in turn is relevant to the capacity people have for making good’ decisions relating to their own and other people’s lives.

Information is not quite the same thing as knowledge, still less is knowledge to be confused with wisdom. Few parents can equal the capacity of television programmes, for example, to convey information to their children. Nevertheless, the role of parents in conveying (however indirectly and inexpertly) their experience of life to their children is the more decisive influence in moulding their children’s characters. It is certainly true that, in some families, children have more contact with the ‘present, immediate’ world of TV images than with the ‘past’ of their parents’ experience of life, but in these cases the TV is being abused, which is not the fault of the technology. Similarly, the new interactive multimedia information technologies should not be rejected because they might be abused. Rather, the dangers, the possible abuses, should be pondered and understood and proper regimes introduced to avoid the dangers. These new technologies are there and make available a vastly increased potential to get at and handle information. They cannot be a substitute for human relations, nor can they replace the learning and understanding that come through the experience of human relations.