The Unethical Era Of Government Surveillance Essay

The Unethical Era of Government Surveillance The Government 's domestic surveillance programs post 9/11 completely infringe on our rights as American citizens, create a mistrust toward government, and aren 't nearly as effective as they claim to be. Surveillance is defined as the observation or monitoring of a person. The government is observing and monitoring to the extreme which is causing an unethical era of surveilling. The government has been using this tool of surveillance to an invasive amount after the tragedy of September 11,2001. Our Country was built on the idea of liberty, and the government is fully jeopardizing this liberty. One of the most important drawbacks of domestic surveillance is that is violates our human

The patriot act as well as several other laws would achieve national surveillance while also going against Americas core principles. The founding fathers of the American nation fought to create these rights as foundations for all Americans. One of the main ways an Americans can feel completely free and liberal is through privacy. Privacy is a simple luxury that every citizen should be allowed to obtain. Unfortunately, privacy and government surveillance programs cannot coexist . The Brennan Center for Justice fact sheet states that, "Since 2006, the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans from some of the largest telecommunications providers in the United States. The NSA has been collecting records of who called whom, when, and for how long." (1) The fourth amendment clearly states that the government must have probable cause or individualized suspicion before

However, the extreme invasion of our rights makes us distrusting and skeptical of our own body of government. Extreme mistrust towards our own government system is another huge disadvantage of government surveillance programs. People will only trust an authority figure to the extent that this authority figure trusts them in return. According to the guardian on government surveillance and trusting the government, "The moment it becomes clear that they are in fact trading their own liberty, the social contract is broken. Violating this trust changes the definition of "us" an "them" in a way that can be dangerous for a democratic authority- suddenly, most of the population stands in opposition to their own government." (source) When people discover the extent of liberty they are giving up to the government, they realize that it is no longer the government and the governed standing together. It is instead two separate groups of people being mistrustful of each other. According to Scott Rasmussen, "Merely 30 percent of voters nationwide have much trust in government officials when it comes to their surveillance efforts. It has also been shown that only 24 percent of voters are confident that the federal government does the right thing most of the time." (realclearpolitics) It is extremely disarming that the government that is supposed to be protecting us is actually inducing more fear