Invasion of Privacy, Missouri Revised Statute 565.253

The invasion of privacy is considered a crime in many countries and these countries have set up laws to ensure that those who are involved in such acts are punished by the law. The severity of these punishments range from country to country with those who are found guilty being fined, while others are given jail sentences (Davidson & Bryant, 2001). Privacy laws in the United States have their origins in the British common law which protected individuals from only the interference with their lives and with their property. This came to be further developed in the United States with the institution of state laws and statutes which further expanded this crime to include the interference of the emotional well being of a person. With the coming of and the continuous development of mass media, there seems to be very little privacy being left to individuals and this has ensured that the current state privacy laws continue to evolve to make sure that the privacy of individuals are protected (Sullivan, 2010). In this paper, we shall discuss the development of privacy laws in the states of America with specific reference to the state of Missouri.

The Missouri Revised Statute 565.253 states that a person will have committed the crime of the invasion of privacy in the second degree if such a person deliberately views, films, or takes another person’s photographs without the latter person’s awareness or permission (Missouri Revised Statutes, 2010). Moreover, this crime will be said to have been committed if the person being filmed or photographed is in a state of nakedness or partial nakedness and if this person is in a place where he or she would anticipate a reasonable belief of their own privacy. Furthermore, this statute states that a person shall be considered to have committed the crime of invasion of privacy if he secretly takes photographs or films another person using a concealed camera or camcorder without the latter’s consent.

As stated above, the early development of privacy laws started with the British common law and the purpose of these laws was originally to protect individuals from interference with their lives and property. However, these laws were further developed to include the protection of the spiritual nature of man as well as his feelings and intellect. These laws were later broadened to include the right of a person to be left alone and property was further defined as comprising of all forms of possessions, both tangible and intangible. Some scholars believe that the historical common law concerning privacy can still be applied today especially in situations where the right to privacy cannot be clearly defined by the current laws (Thaemert, 2002). They believe that the common law is much broader than current laws and that it would be best if it were to be taken seriously in matters concerning privacy and not disregarded as it is today. Common law privacy torts are very rarely used today and in fact, they are not applicable in cases where the affected person is considered to be newsworthy despite the fact that they provide a broader range of options that the Fourth Amendment does.

In the United States, the protection against the invasion of privacy varies from state to state and the American constitution itself does not provide strong penalties against it. Some states have a high level of protection against the invasion of privacy while some are more relaxed and a suspect may get off the hook easily (Siegel et al, 2009). This is not the case with common law which not only protects the right of individuals to be left alone but it also ensures that their property if protected. The common law is more specific in its application because it protects an individual from the invasion of their privacy from both the government and private citizens (Clapman, 2003). The evolution of the current laws and statutes has been largely influenced by the advent of mass media all over the world and the hunger that many people have for sensational news. Most of this highly demanded news requires that those pursuing it invade the privacy of the individuals who they are targeting in order to get the information that they need (De Reza, 2002). It is in such cases that statutes such as the Missouri Revised Statute 565.253 comes in as a way of controlling such behavior in society as well as ensuring that the right to privacy of individuals is protected. State statutes are created to deal with specific issues concerning privacy and are not as generalized as those of the common law. This means that state statutes do not cover everything concerning privacy and they instead make people feel insecure in matters involving their privacy. It would therefore be better if common law were given a little more priority when making decisions in matters concerning the invasion of privacy.

Many changes have taken place in privacy laws from historical common law to the state laws that are mostly used today. Most of these changes have come about as government attempts to put a definition to the various types of privacy invasions (Judge, 2002). Furthermore, the emergence of the media in the world today has made it necessary to make privacy laws which depend on the specific situations within which such media has invaded the privacy of individuals (Elizabeth, 1998). This has not only made privacy laws more complex but it has also ensured that there is a very thin line between whether one has indeed invaded the privacy of an individual or not. These new laws have created a scenario where one is never certain of ever getting justice if one’s privacy has been invaded and in fact, they actually have the opposite effect to what they are intended to do (Volkert, 2005). This is unlike the historical common law which tended to tackle matters directly and often pointed out that a violation of privacy had occurred no matter what the circumstances were. Moreover, the laws against the invasion of privacy in common law were not very complex and this ensured that they got straight to the point without the need of getting into complexities which would distort the entire case.

There are many ways through which this statute can be changed to ensure that matters concerning the invasion of privacy are swiftly dealt with. The first thing that should be done is to ensure that the complexity of the existing statute is reduced so that the public can better understand them and in the process have more confidence in them. Furthermore, there should be equal usage of both this statute and historical common privacy laws to provide stability to the decision making in invasion of privacy cases. The statute should be made to cover a broader range of invasion of privacy crimes than it currently does in order to reduce the number of statutes that have to be instituted to cover the same type of crime. The statute should be meant not only to deal with crimes of invasion of privacy involving the use of modern technology but should also be used to deal with other types of similar cases. To do this, some features of the common law should be included within this statute to enable it to complement the evolving needs that people have to protect the little privacy that they have left to them. This statute should not only target individuals who commit this crime, but it should also target the government and other powerful institutions which invade the privacy of individuals within the state of Missouri. This will not only ensure the efficiency of the law when dealing with such cases, but it will also discourage many who would have committed this crime from doing it.

Adult Learners in Higher Education and Training

The adult learner who was interviewed is an adult male who is thirty six years old and is married with two children. He was born, has lived and worked in the city of Detroit all his life and says that he has no plans of moving away from his home city any time soon. He previously worked at the General Motors Company as a middle skilled worker until he was laid off four years ago at the height of the economic recession that is currently plaguing our country. Despite the fact that he worked for this company since leaving high school, as had his father and grandfather before him, he was among the first to be laid off and he is still quite bitter about the events that led to this. After spending the last four years doing odd jobs, he and his wife, who has a stable job, decided that it would be best for him to return to school to ensure that he has the education necessary to be able to get a more competitive job than he previously did (Kistler, 29 – 30). After securing a loan, he enrolled himself into an adult learning program and he admits that at first he found it very difficult to fit in the new atmosphere where he was in class with people his own father’s age. He states that it took quite an effort to get to accept these people as his classmates and commends their instructors for bringing into class activities which encouraged all the adult students, no matter their background to get to cooperate with each other.

The interviewee says that their instructors introduced class activities, which they referred to as ice breakers, whose purpose was to create an ideal environment which would enable adult students to get to know each other in an educational setting (Flint, 3 – 8). He states that these activities were a great way of getting to establish a common ground between himself and other students who were doing the same course and that they helped him a lot when the time came to cooperate with them. These ice breaking activities were often done especially when they began new classes, during the introduction of new topics or when new adult learning activities were about to be introduced in class. Each course he was undertaking had its own ice breaker activity to fit in with its specific situation but he states that the introductory part was similar for all the courses. During the introduction of the new courses which the adult students had enrolled themselves for, there were activities which were designed to encourage the students within the class to get to know each other so that in case of a need for them to work as groups, then there would be very little difficulty. Furthermore, these get to know each other sessions also had the purpose of ensuring that the adult students became more comfortable within the environment in which they found themselves. They also enabled the promotion of unity and group cohesion in the class.

Although at first many of the adult students did not take these activities seriously, they later came to realize just how helpful it was for their learning process (Frey, 21). Not only did it encourage group work within members of the class but it also promoted unexpected friendships among adults of different generations. Furthermore, it ensured that all the adult students were comfortable in their new environment and that they were more receptive of what their instructors taught them. As these activities continued to be done, there seemed to be an increase in the participation of students in class especially when compared to the first day in class where there was little or no participation from the students. These activities also encouraged the adult learners to form study groups whose aim was to set goals for each member to achieve as well as helping one another in specific areas of weakness. They helped the adult students realize that they all shared the same fears and that it would be best if they were to work together to ensure that they had gotten rid of such fears. An unexpected environment of cooperation was created within the class when the adult students realized that they had so much in common than otherwise. Many came to realize that they had come from the same background and that most of them had been victims of the economic recession which had either rendered them jobless, or it had made the services they had to offer redundant (MacArthur, 108 – 121).

The learning activities in which the interviewee participates were not the same as those which he participated in as a child. The reason for this is that while those activities of childhood were done in the form of games, those in adult learning have a seriousness which can only be attributed to maturity. He further states that he only participates in such learning activities because they are in no way childish and in fact, they are have been tailored to suit an adult learning environment and the strategies of learning which are involved in each course. As an adult learner, the interviewee states that he has encountered quite a number of problems or barriers in his learning process. He states that since he had been away from school for almost eighteen years, it was very hard for him to get back into the mood for learning. Furthermore, he found that the learning process was much altered from what he had previously known because of the new technology being used in class. He has had to redevelop his skills in swift note taking, concentration, and the fast and efficient use of the new technology which is available to him in class. When asked to summarize his experiences as an adult learner, he says that although in the beginning he had a hard time getting to learn within a new environment, the learning activities as well as his quick learning abilities have helped him come a long way towards achieving his goals.

Human Communication

Human communication is very important in the interaction between people within the society and in fact, it is the glue that holds the society together. Without communication, all other elements of society such as religion, government, culture, and organization would be non existent. Instead, there would only be chaos as everybody tried to fend for themselves without any concern for others. Communication is therefore very important for all human societies to function effectively and it has even become more important today due to globalization which has forced people to start communicating across cultures as opposed to when people only used to communicate within their own cultures.

Cultural relativism propagates the notion that all faiths, norms, and principles or values are relative to individuals within their own social contexts. This is to say that what is believed to be morally wrong in one society or culture may not be deemed to be so in another. The need to have cultural relativism in the world has come out of a desire to better understand the cultures which are not our own and to treat them as having equal value. This is a direct effect of globalization as cultures which previously functioned apart from one another have now been forced to come together (Johansson, 205). This means that however much people might feel about other cultures, they have to accept them because not to do so would mean losing the benefits that come with the new world order. Coming to accept other people’s cultures as being equal to the one which one practices can be very difficult and many have for various reasons found it hard to internalize the idea or sense of cultural relativism.

It is often very difficult to embrace cultural relativism if one believes that one’s culture is superior to all other cultures and that the practices of others are not in accordance with one’s view of the world. This creates a bias which is very difficult to get rid of due to the fact that these beliefs are a permanent part of what this individual thinks. Furthermore, it is difficult to internalize cultural relativism when one is not in direct contact with the other cultures which would otherwise have helped in doing this. People tend to spend most of their lives in places where their own cultures are dominant and rarely do they travel to places other than these to experience other cultures. Doing so would be of great help in the process of the internalization of cultural relativism because they would be able to experience other cultures.

Many societal forces affect the cultural boundaries of individuals and these vary from society to society. In some societies, cultural boundaries are affected by the religion practiced by individuals in this society. Religions within certain societies have a tendency of creating boundaries especially when it comes to matters dealing with other religions. Some consider those who practice other religions to be unclean and because of this there is very minimal cultural interaction with them. Moreover, cultural boundaries tend to be created due to prejudices displayed by some people against other cultures because of the differences in the practices between their cultures. For example, in some cultures, women play very prominent roles in the society and are quite vocal while in others, women tend to stay in the background, with no visible roles other than towards their families (Winn, 171 – 172). In this case, people from both of these cultures may view each other with great prejudice because they do not understand why each of them does what they do. They do not understand that the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ have very different meanings in different cultures and what is considered right in one is not necessarily right in the other.

Societal forces which drive cultural boundaries are manifested in the daily communication of individuals. Sometimes, these forces manifest themselves consciously and at other times, they appear unconsciously. We tend to display what our own cultures have taught us about other cultures and this is done even in times when we do not intend to display such characteristics. It is normal for people to believe that their culture is far superior to all others and this is made very obvious when we communicate. An good example of this is when former President George Bush labeled those countries suspected of sponsoring terrorism as The Axis of Evil. This did not go well with these countries the majority of which are Muslim states. President Bush most likely did not intend it to sound like he was declaring war on Islam but this is what it sounded like to most Muslims in the Middle East. We always have to be careful in the way we communicate so that the message being conveyed is not received in a negative light.