The perils of google and the trouble with information, too much and too little....

I was listening to a discussion about ethics and it turned to how the internet had changed our lives in terms of ethics over the past ten or twenty years.  One thing the ethics guru mentioned was how over the past ten years, his answers had changed about the intrusiveness of googling someone.  He said when he was originally asked about whether it was appropriate to google someone -- say you were going on a blind date, etc., people were inclined to feel it was too intrusive. Now, he said, it would seem imprudent not to use all the resources available to get information about a prospective (fill in the blank).

I wondered as I listened to him... you could, for instance, pay for a background check on anyone in minutes over the internet.  Is that intrusive? Does it matter how the information would be used? And then I saw this article.  I am the last one, internet sleuth that I am, to tell anyone not to try to find out information.  However, using it against someone in this way seems like an overstep.  Clearly the parents were upset about not being consulted about the change in teachers.  However, what level of control should parents have over personnel in a school?  If they are in charge of deciding teacher moves, why do you need a principal?  Certainly, the parents have every right to google the teacher, to use that information to form a rational reason for being extra vigilant ... but do they have the right to ban her from a classroom?  If she had been convicted, perhaps ... but she took part in a program specifically designed to get her back into the classroom. 

Well, in other news, I have been following this story about the hanta virus in Yosemite for at least the last two weeks.  I was disturbed to see the first story ... simply saying that two people had contracted it and one person had died.  Now it turns out there were at least four and two of them have died, this year.  The problem here is not too much information, it's too little.  Turns out that there were people infected last year, and maybe the year before.  But were the people staying in these popular and apparently coveted cabins aware of the situation?  Worse than that, what did the agency in charge of these cabins do to protect the public they weren't warning?  It is a little more than ironic that it is the "luxury" cabins that create the haven for deer mice.  Poor little deer mice, they have no interest in being infected themselves, nor in infecting others, they are just making their homes in the best environment available to them.