The Internet: Information Gateway or Exploitative Medium?

Roughly forty years ago, the internet was invented and since then, it has been shaped into the internet that we have today. Since the invention of the internet, millions of people have used it, people ranging from government elites to everyday jo’s. It has become a necessity in the world; without it, the world the of the twenty-first century would collapse. The internet is an entity that has information about literally any subject imaginable, and any given user is only a few clicks away from that information. However, as a great source of information, it is a source of power, and people will seek to exploit it. In addition to being used to find information, the internet has been used to access information. National security agencies around

Intelligence agencies around the world, particularly the U.S., have started surveillance on their own citizens to maintain national security. While stating that it is to protect the people, the government uses the internet to survey its own people to thwart terrorism, but at the cost of personal privacy. The idea of government surveillance in America has its roots in the 1930’s over a wiretapping case, Katz v. United States, where the police “placed an eavesdropping device on a public payphone” to record his illegal gambling operation (Esau 58). The Supreme Court ruled that the police “violated the Fourth Amendment,” and the case was thrown out of court (Esau 58). Today, there are rules, requiring warrants to be obtained before performing any surveillance by a “judge with jurisdiction over the matter” (Esau 58). Over the past years since 9/11, terrorism has increased worldwide, as has the effort to thwart it. After 9/11, the Patriot Act was implemented to streamline the efforts needed to obtain warrant. Proving ineffective, President Bush expanded “approving wiretaps without warrants” by