TOEFL iBT Academic Discussion and Writing Digital privacy - rewrite -

 

☆Question

Should individuals sacrifice a degree of privacy for the convenience and benefits of technology, or should stricter regulations be implemented to protect user data?

 

 

☆Let’s Think

Do research on the following questions and discuss them with others.

1.        What is Alyssa’s point? Provide a case in point.

2.        What is David’s point? Provide a case in point.

3.        Who do you agree with? Share your opinion.

 

☆Hints for Points

1.        The Internet is a Wild West. Laws regulating activities that can do harm to people and the world are almost non-existent. It is wrong and dangerous.

2.        We need laws to restrict activities like cyberbullying, disseminating computer virus, plagiarism, and identity theft.

3.        It is too late. Personal information of most citizens is already out, and once it is out, it cannot be wiped out even if it is deleted.

4.        Strengthening technology to prevent problems is more practical.

5.        Hackers have enough skills to infiltrate almost any system. They do not bother most people because most of them are not so evil.

6.        Self-protection through privacy settings and protective apps will do.

7.        It is a moral issue in the end. There is no key that cannot be broken. We must make a society where keys are unnecessary.

 

☆Responses for Ideas and Expressions

Response 1: I think that loss of personal privacy to some extent is a necessary evil. We cannot use basic internet services such as social media, online subscriptions, and online shopping without giving up some of our privacy. Especially, free online services are provided in exchange for our personal information. When we make an account of a social media, for instance, we type in our name, e-mail address, and some other information of ours. The company providing the free service sells the information we gave it to other companies seeking customers. Then, a few days later, we start getting e-mail ads from shops we do not know. It is somewhat inconvenient to sort out the mailbox full of ads, but we cannot help using the services to stay informed, communicate, and do other activities, although we need to be careful about protecting our lives and financial data. (145 words)

 

Response 2: I believe that international laws regulating activities handling personal data is necessary for contingency situations. The case in point is recent Japanese administrations. They have been linking as many personal data as possible to MyNumber cards, digitized social security number cards, while the system is vulnerable to data leak. The reason is corruption. Those in power now are bought by the IT general contractors, which get lucrative IT projects from the government. Even though the fundamental defect of the system has already been causing troubles to thousands of people, including potentially fatal ones, the government will not discontinue this project. It even plans to link the card to the universal healthcare system by eliminating the paper card, which has no problem. This can expose all the citizens’ medical history to third parties like government officials, business personnel, ill-intentioned individuals or even spies. To avoid such situations, we need to set redlines. (151 words)

 

                                                                                 

☆Response plan

Topic Sentence:

Supporting Details:

Conclusion:

Write your response in 10 minutes. Show each other your responses. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s response.