Ethics: Cyber Privacy and The Emergence of New Technology

The increasing power and functionality of technology has increasingly invaded privacy and complicated security. Technology has made it possible for the government to

With the seemingly exponential propagation of inexpensive digital communications technologies over recent years, the general public is becoming more aware of the issues surrounding information privacy and government surveillance in the digital age. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a smart-phone has to be wary of how they use their private information for fear of that information being collected and used in a way contrary to their wishes. "Leaky" smartphone apps that transmit private information across the internet can be unethically used by government agencies. The issue of privacy is a balancing act; the public usually wants increased privacy and the government usually wants increased access.

NSA infringes on the 1st and 4th Amendment rights. America was the safe zone: a lot of people came to the United States so that they would have the freedom to express who they are, what they believe, and their thoughts without punishment. Edward Snowden, NSA whistle blower, wasn’t allowed that freedom when he made it know what the NSA was doing with Verizon’s phone records. Snowden did break the law but he brought awareness of this dilemma to the average citizen, villain, and hero. In the end, it caused the NSA to change some policies but it doesn’t even make a difference because still the administration continues to collect data without a cause. Correction: the NSA uses surveillance to protect United States of America from terrorist, terrorism and terrorism related crimes… The agency’s interpretation: anyone and anything under the sun.

Government surveillance is beneficial in moderation, but can quite easily become excessive. A well-known example of this is the controversy regarding the NSA monitoring U.S. citizens discreetly on American soil. This unwarranted watch crosses the fine line between monitoring criminal suspects for security, and blatant overreach of authority in spying common citizens. The personal infringement of information has been commonly associated with the NSA’s PRISM, but their MUSCULAR program is much more disconcerting. According to Harry Bruinius in “Why Tech Giants Are Now Uniting Against U.S. Surveillance”:

Governments such as the USA justify mass surveillance by stating it protects citizens from dangerous groups such as criminal organisations, political subversives and terrorists. In addition mass surveillance also maintains social control. The disadvantage of state surveillance that citizens articulate is that it violates the right to privacy and political and social freedoms of individuals.

This editorial is intended to open the eyes of older and middle-aged Americans who are involved in the technology community that we live, but don't understand the hidden repercussions that permeate through their phone, computer, and laptop use. Not many people understand how the government's abilities affect their daily lives, and some are even completely ignorant to their privacy actions. I intend to inform them about the dangers of releasing personal information into the open, as it is not only harmful for yourself, but to others around them.The audience will then learn that the government is always listening to our every text, call, email, search, and keystroke and adding every day people into a bank of information.

Before this law was passed, these agencies would only target the specific individual through video surveillance. Currently, the government spies on everyone in the public eye, whether that person is involved in terrorist activities or not. They go as far as monitoring the “behavior, social interactions, and everything that a person says and does” (179). Solves continues to clarify that, “The ECPA regulate wiretapping, bugging, and searches of computers, among other things. The FISA regulates foreign intelligence gathering of foreign agents on U.S soil” (13). These agencies are not the only ones that are concerned in our affairs. The FBI, CIA, and the NSA, to mention a few, are constantly gathering data, and many times they do so in an unregulated and unlawful manner. Officials get away with this scrutiny because the Fourth Amendment can be convoluted, and conveniently misinterpreted or diluted by the court.

It is important to realize the dangers of government surveillance; personal information containing sensitive details about an individual 's private life put in the wrong hands or otherwise used incorrectly could potentially have disastrous repercussions. In today 's interconnected world, everything that is said and done online is

One of biggest things that concerns critics is the conflict of the fourth amendment. They claim that this program violates the fourth amendment, which prevents unreasonable searches mentions Lee in the Texas Journal of civil liberties and civil rights. Issues and controversies claims, that by the NSA sweeping up metadata, they are invading our privacy, which is one of our most basic rights as American citizens. With the government having that much information and power, it can only spell trouble for the future. Critics are also quick to point out that obtaining the warrant to investigate is more than easily done by officials. Feingold explains that since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was passed in 1978, almost every request for a warrant was approved. Meaning that if the NSA wanted a warrant to wiretap, they were pretty much granted it. FISA also permits immediate wiretap warrant taps as long as the government goes to court for the warrant within 72hrs, adds Feingold. The NSA’s fine print fools many Americans as to what appears to the eye.

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.

The government needs to have limited amount of control and involvement when it comes to citizens’ personal matters. The National Security Agency (NSA) also needs to use different methods to gain the knowledge that they are looking for without breaking amendments and rights that are given to us as American Citizens such as, free speech, free media, and freedom of religion. “William’s law: On balance, the less government is involved in something, the fewer the problems, the greater the level of satisfaction, and the cheaper the cost” (Williams

And with 3 billion phone calls made and 150 billion emails sent to and from the United States every day, the collection of this personal data without specifying the limits to their searches is unclear and unjust. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo among many others have recently, under protection from the Obama administration, revealed details as to the statistics of government collection. Even our nation's biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, were obliged to work with the NSA, lately disclosing information on the filtering equipment they were necessitated to use. The storage of this data for prolonged periods of time also makes these companies and their users vulnerable to security breaches such as theft and attack by hackers; for example, the cyber-security firm Trustwave discovered a server on November 24, 2013 which contained the information of over 318,000 accounts on Facebook. This breach was evidently made possible by companies storing data for an unnecessary amount of time as well as a weakened encryption standard. Both were implemented and enforced by the NSA, and the forced retention this data for over five years not only renders this metadata vulnerable to theft or misuse, but has also not been proven to be notably valuable in thwarting terrorist attacks.

The issue between government surveillance and individual rights has been around for a while now. Government surveillance is a topic that makes most people feel uncomfortable because the idea of having someone seeing your every move is disturbing. All though many say that it is for our own safety it still has several negative outcomes. For example, our personal privacy would be completely lost, the purchasing of programs and software to see everything would be expensive, and people would not feel safe due to the fact that they would not know who exactly is seeing their personal information and what they could do with it.

This occurs on the basis that they claim it is necessary to protect against terrorists, criminals and political rebels, and to maintain control of society. Mass surveillance has been widely criticized for being a violation of privacy rights, and to prevent political and social freedom. In some cases, however, the interests of society be seen as more important than the individual's privacy so that privacy can be restricted.

Thomas Jefferson once said that “Everyone has the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If the government spied on its citizens, the citizens would carry the burden of having the government constantly watch every move being made, interfering with citizens pursuit of happiness. With that being said, if a citizen’s privacy was invaded then their pursuit of happiness would be demolished. The government should not be able to spy on its citizens because it is a major invasion of privacy, people become fearful of the government, and is a large violation of the rights citizens are permitted.