Persuasive Essay On Security Vs Privacy

As the power imbalance caused by mass surveillance makes people have no idea about what and how their private information will be used, they will be in danger in a way that their private data are being at risk of secondary use and disclosure. Shawn B. Spencer, a Climenko/Thayer Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, in “SECURITY VS. PRIVACY: reframing the debate,” defines the term of secondary use by saying that people’s private information created or collected through surveillance for one purpose is easily used for another without their consent. It means that this information may be collected for the purpose of terrorism, but used for personal gain or corporate profit. David Price, the professor of Anthropology in the Department of Society

In this case, people hardly feel secure when their private information is being used for the unclear purpose without their permission. Moreover, the private information being collected is easily disclosed due to insufficient safeguards over personal information (Spencer). Any database is vulnerable to invading. When the government stores a large amount of innocent citizens’ private information, it puts them in danger in a way that their private data may be obtained by other parties. Thus, practicing mass surveillance on Americans for the purpose of the security will increase the risk of exposing their private data to outsiders rather than making them feel

Race and surveillance are intertwined in the history of the U.S. During the cold war, the FBI racialized blacks as security threads; they surveilled black leaders, dissenters, activists, and organizations through its COINTELPRO in order to devastate the Black Power movements (Hutchinson). FBI Director J, Edgar Hoover even tried to force Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide by anonymously threatening to disclose personal information obtained through surveillance (Hutchinson). The FBI’s practices of surveillance on blacks exacerbated racial problems and intensified social conflicts. After 9/11, the war on terror shapes practices of surveillance in a way that Muslim Americans have experienced intensive surveillance. Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar, in their article, “Race, surveillance, and empire,” identify that specific targets of the government’s surveillance were being placed on Muslim American without reasonable suspicion of their involvement in terrorism activities. According to Kundnani and Kumar, the National Counterterrorism Center’ maintains a database of terrorism suspects worldwide, which includes “20,800 persons within the U.S. who are disproportionately concentrated in Dearborn, Michigan, with its significant