english rhetorical analysis 1
Wittke 1
Taylor Wittke
Shane Hunter
English 151
2/16/15
Privacy Issues: We All Have Them
In the essay, “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”, published on May 15, 2011, Professor Daniel J. Solove is trying his best to convince his well sophisticated audience that the issue of privacy affects more than just the everyday people veiling a wrong doing. His argument focuses around ethos, and a lot of it. Although there are some logos and pathos, they aren’t as nearly as strong as his ethos. In the type of society that we live in today, privacy has become more and more broad. Everyone sees it on an everyday occurrence just about; including on social networking sites, HIPAA forms, or even with people just simply observing you and what you do. This could be anything from talking on the phone, to searching something on the internet. This essay is ethical as well as logical in tone, appealing to his audience. He starts this argument off with his “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument, which is mentioned in arguments regarding the government’s gathering of our personal information as well as data. Solove explains how this argument goes from a faulty definition of what privacy truly is, as well as what it retains. The importance of the nothing-to-hide argument says that since the information will not be revealed to the people of the public, the “privacy interest is minimal,
Wittke 2 and the security interest in preventing terrorism is much more important” (Solove, pg. 3). This is basically stating that privacy issues are not just problems in the US, but in other countries as well. Also, this means that the government is only doing this to help us, the people, stay well protected against terrorism. He reassures us that this is not just the case, but that we need to be focused on what is happening with the government observing our privacy in the U.S. He is using some of both logos and pathos in this quote. The logos as a fact that privacy issues aren’t as
Taylor Wittke
Shane Hunter
English 151
2/16/15
Privacy Issues: We All Have Them
In the essay, “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”, published on May 15, 2011, Professor Daniel J. Solove is trying his best to convince his well sophisticated audience that the issue of privacy affects more than just the everyday people veiling a wrong doing. His argument focuses around ethos, and a lot of it. Although there are some logos and pathos, they aren’t as nearly as strong as his ethos. In the type of society that we live in today, privacy has become more and more broad. Everyone sees it on an everyday occurrence just about; including on social networking sites, HIPAA forms, or even with people just simply observing you and what you do. This could be anything from talking on the phone, to searching something on the internet. This essay is ethical as well as logical in tone, appealing to his audience. He starts this argument off with his “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument, which is mentioned in arguments regarding the government’s gathering of our personal information as well as data. Solove explains how this argument goes from a faulty definition of what privacy truly is, as well as what it retains. The importance of the nothing-to-hide argument says that since the information will not be revealed to the people of the public, the “privacy interest is minimal,
Wittke 2 and the security interest in preventing terrorism is much more important” (Solove, pg. 3). This is basically stating that privacy issues are not just problems in the US, but in other countries as well. Also, this means that the government is only doing this to help us, the people, stay well protected against terrorism. He reassures us that this is not just the case, but that we need to be focused on what is happening with the government observing our privacy in the U.S. He is using some of both logos and pathos in this quote. The logos as a fact that privacy issues aren’t as