Surveillance is the process of monitoring activities, behavior or other information that pertains to people. The aim of surveillance is to influence, manage, and protect the well-being of the same people being monitored. Surveillance may occur in different forms such as observation of a person from a distance using a camera or a CCTV. It may also go beyond camera to involve interception of transmitted of information such as phone calls and internet, the act perfected by government agencies. Further, surveillance may take the form of low-technology methods like human intelligent agents and postal interceptions. The word surveillance emanated from the French lingua which means “watching over.” In the modern world, surveillance is used by government agencies to collect and gather intelligence (Dinev et al. 215). They do so to curb crimes and prevent an attack from occurring. It is also done for investigation of crimes that have already occurred surveillance is also used by criminal organizations to collect information before committing a crime such as kidnappings or robberies. Businesses also use the process to collect information on their competitors. Essentially, surveillance is used in every quarter of the United States for either good reason or bad. Despite all the usefulness of surveillance, it still remains a violation of privacy of people being watched without their knowledge. It is opposed by civil liberties groups and activist. The constitution of the United States protects and safeguards the right of citizens to their privacy. It is a violation to one’s rights and one may file a suit against the law breaker, including the government of the United States. The Government has in past few years been monitoring and tapping communication of the citizens. It does so secretly but cites that it is meant to protect the citizens against any attacks (Dinev et al. 218). However, the government should stop listening to the communication and allow its citizens to enjoy their privacy.
It is important to note that American government surveillance cannot be treated to the values of liability. This is because the constitution defends people from awkward searches attacks without a court warrant. After the passage of the FISA and other ensuing laws, the citizens are no-longer protected in regards to electronic surveillance. Due to the advancement of technology, it is now considered more invasive than a physical search. It is now easier for the government to perform surveillance on its citizens without their knowledge. Collection of information by the government does not put into consideration the issues that arise with the information collected. First, the data collected is vulnerable to abuses by the insiders. The insiders can be moles to other governments or criminal gangs. They can then share the information to the gangs which may result in kidnappings and robbery. For instance, in 2007, a special agent in the Department of commerce used the intelligence collected to track the journey model on his ex-girlfriend and the relatives. Studies indicate that he did the above for more than 150 times prior to his arrest (Slobogin 45). With the continuing of government surveillance, such mistreatments are expected to be frequent and egregious because the number of private information being collected is escalating. Through the illegal and unethical government initiative to continue collecting private information, most lives are being put into jeopardy and it is the high time that the government stopped the action. If one form of clandestine surveillance is allowed on the citizens, then the government shall be encouraged to expand it surveillance. For instance, initially, the government took fingerprints of school going children as a test. It has now escalated to taking children’s DNA. This action makes people live with fear of being implicated as criminals (Slobogin 56). The government should stop this and focus on protecting the citizens from terrorism.
Another reason the government should do away with surveillance is because it chills the exercise of citizens’ civil liberties. Consider the case when people are reading, thinking, and communication in order to come up with a solid standpoint on a political and social issue. When these people are under surveillance, it will cause them not to experiment new, deviant, or controversial ideas for the fare of being watched and being branded radicals. In order for intellectuals to think and come up with helpful ideas, they need to have intellectual privacy (Lyon 57). This gives them a perfect chance to speak their minds and argue without fear of being interdicted. Without this freedom, the country will starve for ideas because no one will be willing to speak. Equally, this surveillance poses a power-dynamic between the watcher and the watched. The watcher is always superior an in control over the watched because he/she has an upper hand which is provided by the information they posses. The disparity results in a number of risks such as discrimination, a threat of selective enforcement, intimidation. The opposition or the critic of the governments are sometimes blackmailed or punished for crimes they have not committed. Like the adage goes, information is power and the information that the surveillance that the government processes makes it more powerful. At times, this is the reason citizens should be protected from the excesses of the government which has made itself extra powerful (Lyon 156). The Government of America has still maintained that it does not do surveillance on its citizens despite the leakage released by Edward Snowden, a former NSA agent. The government has argued that it collects information in order to protect its citizens from external attacks. It continues to argue that it is by listening that it can collect enough intelligence on the state of the security of the country. However, this is not justifiable and should not warrant infringing one’s rights to privacy.
The government has been publicly pushing for a telecommunication company to provide personal information in mobile phone gadgets. Recently, the government and the Apple Company have had court battles where the government wants the company to release a code so that it can read into the mobile phones of the users. The iPhone have the option of setting a security feature which only allows a number of tries in order to unlock a phone. Failure to get the password right automatically locks the phone which cannot be opened until all the data is deleted. This important security measure helps put data out of the wrong hands. The FBI now wants the company to disable the security feature so that they can access the content of the mobile gadget. However, if the company disables the security measure, the government will be able to guess as many options as possible. This will mean that the security of iPhone users is at stake. These are the same efforts by the government to collect as much information from its citizens as possible. However, the company has vowed never to remove the security, which in my case, is the right way to go in the attempts of curbing government surveillance on its citizens. Citizens must appreciate the fact that surveillance exceeds the public/private divide. Even if people struggle to get rid of government surveillance, it should be noted that any solution should grapple with the sophisticated relationship that exists between the government and the corporate on-lookers (Dinev et al. 245). Citizens should also appreciate that secret surveillance is illegal and forbid the attempts to create a secret surveillance in our homes and work places. Finally, we should acknowledge that surveillance is harmful in the constitutional standing doctrine.
Works Cited
Dinev, Tamara, Paul Hart, and Michael R. Mullen. "Internet privacy concerns and beliefs about government surveillance–An empirical investigation." The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 17.3 (2008): 214-233.
Lyon, David. Surveillance as social sorting: Privacy, risk, and digital discrimination. Psychology Press, 2003.
Slobogin, Christopher. Privacy at risk: The new government surveillance and the Fourth Amendment. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
