Political Science: State of the Union Response

According to “A Surveillance Society” By William E. Thompson there are camera everywhere, watching everything you do at all times. Cameras are found everywhere and are used by everyone, including the governments of the world who use it the most to track its citizens and potential threats to the safety of their nation. People are more willing to be watched in order to feel safer everywhere they go such as the supermarket to your own workplace. Governments can now look into your email, travel records, credit history and your personal life without your knowledge of them ever doing so, even your neighbors can now easily buy tools to spy on others or to protect themselves from danger; Things such as security cameras

Privacy and safety of citizens is common in today's society, as well as the government looking over their shoulder at all times. As an example, George Orwell wrote a book called, "1984" which in it gave an outlook of society being taken over by a party. Government surveillance is different from protecting and bringing safety to the citizens, it violates their freedom, privacy, and human rights.

A government should not waste its time and resources keeping tabs and spying on its own civilians who are innocent haven’t done anything to make them a person of interest. Only people who have had previous offenses or are suspected of being terrorist and or criminals should be tracked. The government in 1984 spies on its citizens day and night. For example “They could spy upon you night and day”(Orwell, 182). Watching people in their daily lives is an extreme invasion of privacy. Imagine if your parents watched you twentyfour seven in your room when you were growing up. You probably wish they’d have some human decency and give you some privacy. When you are constantly being monitored nothing in your life is or can be private and there is no escape from being stocked. For example “Always

Every since 9/11, the surveillance in the United States has become stricter and of more importance. The security is more top-notch than it has ever been because of the fear a future terrorist attack striking once again. The United States government is doing this for safety issues and the protection of Americans, but many are against the whole idea of having the government spy on you and others actually agree with it.

AARP: Was founded in 1958, a teacher named Dr.Ethel Percy Andrus, this group was formally known as National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA ).Which was also established in 1947 also by Dr.Andrus, which was to promote the productivity of aging and the need for health insurance for retired teachers. It was hard back then for the aging to get health insurance Until the government enacted Medicare in 1965, this provides medical care for individuals 65 and older.AARP also has a discount mail order pharmacy service.To promote independence, purpose, and dignity for elderly, enhance the quality of life and to encourage the elderly “to serve and not be served.”AARP is a nonprofit organization.

Mass surveillance is a word that has been thrown around every so often in the last few decades, especially ever since George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although this book was released over 60 years ago, some aspects of the book are seeming to become true in the United States, and other parts of the world today. The idea of mass surveillance isn’t so taboo anymore, as there are several programs ran by sovereign countries around the world which monitor their domestic citizens, as well as citizens and leaders of other foreign countries. With all of our technological communication advances since 1949, this age of information is only going to get more severe, and more tracking and monitoring will be done. The biggest offender of doing

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

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.

Government surveillance has not contributed to a decrease of percentage in crimes, but has created a controversial topic instead. Online surveillance has been an invasion of privacy, because everything the users access is seen without their consent. Due to the fact the stored data is not used, government surveillance in the united states has not been very impactful. Crimes and terrorist attacks were not stopped, and the mass storage of personal data within the last year has violated privacy laws 2,776 times (Government Surveillance 722). Surveillance online is not only unsuccessful in America, but in UK, and Canada as well. Out of every 1000 security cameras, only one camera is actually used to catch a criminal (Government Surveillance 722). However, there are several solutions that can be made to allow the usage of government surveillance without the violating the rights of Americans. Some of the solutions have already taken action, and will give users more freedom online.

Government surveillance can’t ever be fully eliminated or eradicated, therefore it must be modified or reformed to make it more acceptable, moral, and effective overall and cost wise. The first step would be to implement some sort of limitations on what and how the government can use surveillance. It should especially be limited in the way that the undertaking of bulk data collection should be eliminated completely since it has been proven many times over to be almost completely ineffective. It should also be limited to where the government can only use surveillance on known users or threats. Doing this would assist in making government surveillance more moral and acceptable and infringe less on constitutional and inalienable human rights,

Mass surveillance has been a huge controversy between the government and society. The government uses advanced technology to perform mass surveillance on the citizens. In No Place To Hide, Glenn Greenwald told society about the National Security Agency (NSA) using mass surveillance on Americans without warrants. He encourages people to recover their privacy rights back. Edward Snowden is the person who disclosed the NSA’s secret surveillance activity to Glenn Greenwald. Edward felt that Americans need to know they’re being watched without their permission. Edward states this is why it should be exposed to the public, so they may know what is going on in the administration. Glenn Greenwald also gives an understanding

Desperate times call for desperate measures, or at least measures that will sometimes go against the norms. The idea of balancing security and individual liberty is a false one, in my opinion. I believe this because we have no control over terrorism and terrorists, we can make sure everyone is enjoying their individual privacy rights granted under the United States Constitution, but we cannot assure security from terrorists and their attacks. It is difficult to balance two different issues when we do not have control of both of them, to do this we must first win the fight against terrorism, and then focus on balancing security and liberty.

Unfortunately, before attending Political Science 110 at Oregon State University, I had little prior knowledge about the details in the United State’s government. I was also unsure or did not understand any other types of government, besides democratic. By attending this course, my knowledge about the United States government and the details about the government, have expanded.

The first controversy claim against government surveillance is the issue regarding the issue of privacy. The appeal to respecting privacy is not to instigate debate as to whether what I hold sacred and value is conveying a misguided messages of having something to hide. Having privacy is a privileged right. Privacy does not hinge on one concept or the other, it is both. Laws are in place to outline and respect boundaries, and privacy is one of those boundaries. Even though the issue of privacy is not precisely stated in the Constitution of the United States, there is however aspects of privacy that are protected. According to the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution it states that the “enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people…This has been interpreted as justification for broadly reading the Bill of