Enemy of the State: A Time Capsule of Today's Surveillance

Enemy of the State could serve as a cinematic “time capsule” of present day because the technology advances portrayed in the film are now being implemented in national security as of today. The movie starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight is an attention keeping thriller. It follows the life of Robert Dean, played by Will Smith, a father, husband, and lawyer who randomly gets a videotape of the U.S. Senator being murdered. Dean instantly becomes the target of corrupt politicians and national security agents. The film goes on to show different techniques the government utilized to keep track of Dean. Measures that one might have thought were typical movie exaggerations but are common in everyday life today. In the film satellite live

Even though phone tapping has dated back to 1890 with controversial cases like the recording of Dr. Martin Luther King, they required strategic work to place them on phones. Present day phones taps require little to no work ethic. When phone wiretapping was first implemented it literally require lots of wires to be attached to the subjects phone. In the late nineties when Enemy of the State was filmed phone tapping required less wires and a small quarter sized device but the taps still had to physically be placed on the subjects phone. The movie illustrated how the corrupt agents had to stage a burglary to be able to put the taps on Dean’s phones as well as twenty of his associates phones. In today's world one can simply download an application on a smart device and have the same if not better capability of listening in on someone else's phone conversation. Law enforcement officials have even simpler methods that they can utilized with proper authorization and

In modern day society just about everything one does is either being monitored or recorded. Advances in technology has indeed stripped our generation from solitude. One can not even call the bank to handle private business matters without being warned that the call is being monitored and/or recorded. Street light polls especially in high crime areas are equipped with surveillance cameras. Two-thirds of the U.S. population are smartphone owners so one can be getting recored and have no known knowledge about it. Moviegoers who watch Enemy of the State back in the nineties probably did not have a clue that the advances in technology portrayed in the movie would actually be a part of everyday life eighteen years later. The advances in technology and security are pertinent to our country well being. If it was not for such progression we would be faced with many terrorist attack and unsolved crimes. In agreeance with the actor Dean in the film, advancements in security can be a gift and a curse. We are indeed sacrificing personal privacy for the betterment of the nation. Nothing done goes unseen and technology will only become more sophisticated and unrestricted. One never know, twenty years from now we may have cameras instill inside of