Surveillance and government
- Raven Kwan
- Aug 10, 2017
- 3 min read
Let’s talk about how surveillance by government became an issue first. It started in Arab 2011, the government afraid the overspeed of the current social movement, they decided to enhance the surveillance of the social movements participant, journalist and any kind of people who determine as rebel, the government fear of the revolution in their country. This attracted the world’s attention.
Till 2013, media such as “Guardian” and “The Washington Post” reported that the data provided by Snowden, a former contractor of the US National Security Agency (NSA), showed that NSA, FBI and other government agencies directly cooperate with the telecommunications companies, Internet companies, to monitor US public, foreign government agencies, civil institutions and public telephone records, internet records, email e.t.c. confidentially. That became the main stream discussion in The United States and international community on government surveillance activities.
In my opinion, government surveillance is a double-edged sword, you can attack or defence yourself by using it, but also you may get hurt from it. Many of the US government monitoring activities, which were disclosed by Snowden, were largely implemented after the “911” incident. After the "911" incident, American anxiety about safety was increase, especially after the Congress had attributed the incident to the failure of government intelligence agencies, the US government eager to collect data through large-scale to enhance the sense of security. For the American people, this means sacrifice their personal privacy for the expense of security.
Is it really incompatible between security and privacy? In my opinion, kind of, but in a certain trade off. Most of the surveillance projects that are currently exposed by the media and cause widespread controversy are datamining projects. The reliability of the information derived from datamining depends on the reliability of the data it uses. When the government secretly collects personal data on a large scale, it cannot effectively check the authenticity, accuracy and relevance of these data. When people realize that the government monitoring, they might consciously disguise, or provide some wrong data, data quality will not be guaranteed in the case. In fact, surveillance and privacy protection is not absolutely incompatible, good privacy protection policy can guarantee the accuracy, integrity, relevance and timeliness of personal data, which can improve the reliability of data mining and other data application technology, However, many of the practices of the US government are contrary to it.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”(Franklin, B, 1755) Benjamin Franklin warned 200 years ago, still full of meaning when you read the words above. Government agencies in the collection of information, always consciously or unconsciously expand the scope of collection, often beyond the initial set of purpose and scope. Even if the purpose of the government to collect information is indeed out of counterterrorism, it cannot be unscrupulously to disregard privacy of their people.
“Snowdon” incident to examine the US government surveillance system provides a good perspective, through this event, you can feel the traditional government surveillance system in the context of modern information technology challenges, people need to rethink the government surveillance, relationship between national security and personal privacy protection.
Reference:
Franklin,B, 1755, Quote by Benjamin Franklin, The United State
Isaac, M, 2006, Privatizing Surveillance: The use of data mining in federal law enforcement, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Soghoian, C, 2013, Government surveillance – this is just the beginning, video, TEDTALK, retrieved on 9 August <https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_soghoian_government_surveillance_this_is_just_the_beginning?>
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