Digitally Tracking and Monitoring People

5 Ways You Give The Government Control” written by Kenneth Coats shows how the devices we use daily slowly take over individuals lives. Coats states, “Today, most people in the United States carry a mobile phone that accompanies them wherever they go. We use them for everything...This essentially makes them the perfect tracking and bugging devices”. Although electronic devices are known to be safe, they allow outside people to figure out individuals personal life. Due to the need for devices such as cell phones, each individual has a high chance of being socially stalked once in their lifetime. Coats then states, “Not only do intelligence agencies gather information via mobile companies, but… your phone can be hacked using spyware. Even if your phone is turned off, it can be remotely accessed to recorded conversations and take photographs”. This issue causes a panic due to the wide spread of inappropriate pictures and private conversations in one's life. Even though technology is viewed as a privileged, it is also taking away people's lives without their

Technology is apart of mostly everyone’s life and daily schedule, but often people fail to realize the fact that the government has the ability to monitor everything someone does through these devices. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, a futuristic government spies on their citizens through technology found all throughout their homes. The government used secret microphones, telescreens, and the thought police, a group in charge of finding rebels against the party, in order to monitor what people say and think. There are many examples of this in today’s society: Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung Smart televisions, and social media apps. Amazon’s Alexa and Samsung Smart Televisions are voice recognition systems

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

Although technology has provided tools to enhance our capabilities in things such as finding a missing person, solving murder cases based on technological assets etc.., this technology also leaves us vulnerable in many ways to slowly losing our privacy (Burten, C., 2012).

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

Specific Purpose: My purpose of this presentation is to inform listeners about the dangers of government surveillance and why it should be stopped.

Technological surveillance is used in a wide field of areas from wiretapping, hacking, bugging, electronic tracking, video surveillance and so on, but, “when used by the government, technological surveillance creates a particularly dramatic threat to the privacy of individual citizens” (p. 354), although this is uncertain to the government if it is indeed goes against citizen’s privacy. Technology advances so quickly, that the law cannot keep up with the swift changes.

Advancements in technology have revolutionized the way individuals in a society communicate and function. The twentieth century gave rise to the internet, radio communications, GPS technology, and countless other ways of capturing, documenting, and recording our lives. Due to rapid technological advancements, mass surveillance of populations is currently on the rise. Mass surveillance is defined as the use of technology for the intricate monitoring of the general population mainly by the government. Although mass surveillance has been used all throughout history, it is evident that the technologies of it are becoming more prevalent in our society today.

A single click on the mouse can cause your privacy and identity to be leaked. In the article, “Your Browser Is Selling You Out,” the unknown author(s) states that popular programs are using Net transmissions, website advertisements are using cookies to collect personal information and browsers are also using cookies to collect information (“Your Browser Is Selling You Out”). In the magazine article, “How Private Is Your Private Life?” the author, Andrea Rock, shows that her privacy is getting documented every time she is near or using an electronic device (Rock 683-687). People’s personal privacy is being collected, stored, bought or sold everyday. The government needs to figure out a way to tighten the limits on privacy being shared and stored. Information on someone’s privacy is being taken with every click, privacy is being taken when downloading and installing programs, and personal information is even being collected while completing everyday activities such as using a credit card or an E-ZPass.

Coming from the twenty first century, the growing number of people in the Tech industry pushes the limits of having people have as much privacy and security as possible. Just like the Big Brothers' world he has created, having telescreen everywhere, we have cameras that have eyes on our movements all throughout our daily motions. Big Brother has limited the way people live in their virtual world. Ranging from the Government having their selfish eyes on our daily activities, these led to our world also openly accept these types of anti privacy we humans should need. The world of Big Brother has approached us faster than we know it, and technology is at its peak to comparing to the book of 1984.

Don’t Track Me, a seven part internet-based documentary, gave incredible insight to how we are monitored as we use the internet. This documentary made several key points about the social consequences of surveillance. Not only are we signing away different parts of our privacy by hitting the “accept” button when we access public WiFi, we are feeding an industry that thrives on selling what it finds out about us as we browse through our Facebook news feed. Don’t Track Me argues that we should care about surveillance because it is hidden in everything that we do. We are being tracked everywhere we go, and with every internet-enabled device we use. This tracking is being sold to different companies: they are profiting off of invading your privacy.

The online world has recently changed from being able to make a phone call in privacy to having someone being able to hear your every word, without you even knowing. Our value of privacy has changed over the years as we have somewhat taken for granted the privacy we originally had. Some could even say that we have arrived back in the future in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, with the lack of privacy that we currently possess.

Thanks to the popularization of the internet, we can now keep ourselves connected to the cloud every minute. While the internet has brought us immense convenience and enjoyment, we have been compromising our privacy using it. Every day, we exchange megabytes or even gigabytes of data via the internet, and inevitably share our personal information with someone out there. Throughout the past decades, we have begun to realize that the internet is not secure—our information could be easily acquired by someone we don’t even know. Admittedly, today, our activities online can be easily surveilled. The discussion over privacy and surveillance has been heated in the recent several years, and many have blamed surveillance for “damaging democracy” and “invading human rights.” However, we should realize that we are looking at the issue too subjectively. We are far too over paranoid about our privacy. We need to give online data collection credit for keeping our society

Many people fear that the world will become like the world of 1984, yet they are oblivious that it is slowly becoming more like it every day. They fear for their privacy and free thought while the government is keeping track on their every move. The world’s quickly advancing technology is bringing it closer to the world of Big Brother than we have ever been before.

With the primary concern being that of illegal immigrants in flowing into, and residing within the city of Centervale, the following proposal will prove strategic as it will bring to light material regarding what is revered today as the most successful surveillance techniques available. The surveillance techniques of which will be proposed in this memo can be used for vehicle tracking, cell phone tracking, email, background checks, and computer surveillance techniques. While immigration issues tend to plague a myriad of towns, cities, and states, the issue is not one that is conceived as irrepressible; instead, utilizing some, or all of the techniques recommended in this proposal will allow for better prepared local and state law