privacy

Banner ads — those ubiquitous rectangular advertisements that typically span the headings of Web pages — were once the bread and butter of online promotions. But as users learned how to ignore banner ads, they’ve been replaced by text-based advertisements such as Google Ads or flashy multimedia promotions.

Concerns about the decline in personal privacy have long troubled citizens, scholars and politicians. The issue was most famously raised in “The Right to Privacy,” published in the Harvard Law Review in 1890 by jurists Samuel D. Warren and Louis Brandeis, the future Supreme Court justice.

In response to the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) two years later. Among its provisions was financial assistance to enable states to replace traditional voting machines — including those responsible for Florida’s notorious “hanging chads” — with direct-recording electronic (DRE) devices intended to be more accurate and secure.

As the United States commemorates the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, questions about what the nation and world have learned over this decade and the true scope of the consequences are front and center.