"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
-- Benjamin Franklin
INTRODUCTION:
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts...the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
U.S. has enjoyed being the most dominant country in the world for almost a century now. No one argues the supremacy, be it militarily or economically, of U.S. in present days. U.S. dominance is so overwhelming that almost nothing can restraint its will, case in point, the recent war without approval of U.N. A disturbing trend seems to be developing. An overconfident/arrogant international policy and a growing fascist domestic policy appear to be the image of U.S. government at this point in time.
With every passing year, the government is doing more and more surveillance on the people, citizen and foreigners, without their knowledge and consent. The recent world events have escalated the situation. To be sure, the U.S. government was already on the path of slowly encroaching on privacy well before the events. But since 9/11, the citizens have willingly given up their resistance against the government’s encroachment on privacy in search for national unity and safety. They gave the government more power to prosecute foreigners and citizens accused of terrorism
In the 1990s, as technology evolved rapidly the government has kept pace and tried to create new ways to surveillance using the evolving technologies. In addition to that, the government is seeking to find ways to break through encrypted data by asking software companies to allow build-in backdoors for the government to decode sensit...
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Karen Tumulty and Viveca Novak, Goodbye, soccer mom. Hello, security mom. TIME Magazine. 2 Jun. 2003 ISSUE.
Jack Ryan. McAfee broadens denial: No contact with government of any sort. Internet Security Review.
28 Nov, 2001. http://lists.insecure.org/lists/politech/2001/Nov/0109.html
Bugbear worms threaten Internet. CNN.com/Technology. 08 Jun. 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/06/08/computer.worm/index.html
Urge Congress to Stop the FBI's Use of Privacy-Invading Software. American Civil Liberty Union. http://www.aclu.org/Cyber-Liberties/Cyber-Liberties.cfm?ID=9958&c=58
John Leyden. Zimmermann defends strong crypto against govt assault. 10 Mar. 2001. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/22014.html
Declan McCullagh, Lantern' Backdoor Flap Rages. 27 Nov. 2001. http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48648,00.html
"Washington,George" BrainyQuote.com. “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”Xplore Inc, 2014. 10 January 2014.
...asserts “But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once better government.”
" Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."
Abraham Lincoln, "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here."
Edward Snowden is America’s most recent controversial figure. People can’t decide if he is their hero or traitor. Nevertheless, his leaks on the U.S. government surveillance program, PRISM, demand an explanation. Many American citizens have been enraged by the thought of the government tracing their telecommunication systems. According to factbrowser.com 54% of internet users would rather have more online privacy, even at the risk of security (Facts Tagged with Privacy). They say it is an infringement on their privacy rights of the constitution. However, some of them don’t mind; they believe it will help thwart the acts of terrorists. Both sides make a good point, but the inevitable future is one where the government is adapting as technology is changing. In order for us to continue living in the new digital decade, we must accept the government’s ability to surveil us.
With the introduction of the internet being a relatively new phenomenon, the act of cyber espionage is not something that has been properly acknowledged by society. The American Government has done a stand up job of keeping its methods in the shadows and away from the eyes of its people since its documented domestic surveillance began on October 4th, 2001; Twenty three days after the Twin Towers fell President George Bush signed an order to begin a secret domestic eavesdropping operation, an operation which was so sensitive that even many of the country's senior national security officials with the...
Since the terrorist attacks at Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance issue often has turned away the table in the debate of individual privacy or counterterrorism. By passing the Patriot Act, Congress gave President Bush an immense law enforcement authority to boost U.S's counterterrorism, and the President used his enlarged powers to forward specific programs in order to reduce the threat of terrorism and defend the country’s safety.
Privacy is central to our understanding of freedom of expression and thus on a larger scale democracy. Mass surveillance is an invasion of common man’s privacy. Recent development in the way in which technology can invade privacy has heightened the need for greater protection freedom of expression. However, a major problem in this area is that the public are not provided with adequate information to act against such invasion of their rights. To date, there has been little agreement to what extent mass surveillance should be allowed in the name of providing security to the citizen of the country and to what extent privacy of the citizens of other countries should be respected.
Thomas Jefferson once stated, "When the people fear the government you have tyranny... when the government fears the people you have liberty." (http://www.chvanilla.net/frogquotes.html)
“What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security didn’t depend upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter an enemy attack?”
Howard Rheingold notably mentioned, "You can’t assume any place you go is private because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and invisible." Judging by the efficiency of American surveillance, it would seem that Rheingold’s outlook stands as of today. Technology has advanced so powerfully that surveillance has become predominant in our society. On nearly every front, American citizens are under a great threat of control as well as persistent, high-tech surveillance.
“Liberty has never come from the government, liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance” (Wilson). In “The Liberty Song” by John Dickinson, he talks about uniting and dividing. If people divide, hell will come and if people unite, they will live in peace with freedom and liberty. In JFK’s Inaugural Address, he talks about uniting together no matter someone’s skin color, culture, or if they are male or female. If people be liberal to each other, it allows them to work together and if all people can come and work together they can create freedom, liberty, and peace.
"The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made entirely to it's generosity."
The American government used to be able to keep the people in happy ignorance to the fact that they watch every move they make. After certain revelations of people like Edward Snowden, the public knows the extent of the government spying. On June 5, 2013 Edward Snowden leaked documents of the NSA to the Guardian (The Guardian 2). The whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed to the world how the American government collects information like cell phone metadata, Internet history, emails, location from phones, and more. President Obama labeled the man a traitor because he showed the world the illegal acts the NSA performs on US citizens (Service of Snowden 1). The government breached the people’s security, and now the people are afraid because everyone is aware of how the US disapproves of people who do not agree with their programs. Obama said that these programs find information about terrorists living in the US, but he has lit...
Privacy threats are currently the biggest threat to National Security today. The threats are not only concerning to the government, however. An alarming 92% of Americans are concerned that the power grid may be vulnerable to a cyber-attack (Denholm). Although this is a more recent development to the cyber threats we have experienced, this is not the first time that privacy threats have stepped into the limelight as people are forced to watch their every online move.