Surveillance Among Immigrants

Domestic Surveillance in the Unites States has been going on for decades without the public 's knowledge. Domestic Surveillance didn 't seem important in the eye of the American government. After the September attacks (9/11) congress started to treat Domestic Surveillance as a number one priority. After September 11th Congress passed a law to use military force for those responsible for the attacks in New York, NY. The go ahead with using military force did not give the President to use surveillance without a warrant. Congress started to pass legislation against counterterrorism efforts. The most controversial measures, including the 2001 USA Patriot Act that gave the US federal government the ability to collect and analyze private information that has identified itself with the United States of America.

Majority of transgender people will face some sort of discrimination in their lifetime whether it is through being rejected by their families, denied housing or finding employment. “Employment discrimination forces many to become involved in the street economy and in survival crime. Widespread bias and ignorance among law enforcement and other officials mean that transgender people are disproportionately subjected to arrest and, in turn, imprisonment.” (al, 2011)

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.

Most don’t explicitly look into the complexity of a transgender person’s life and all the questions or problems one might face: Do I use the men’s or the women’s bathroom? Is it appropriate to use this locker room? Those are only two of the many questions a transgender person might run into on a daily basis because of how others would see the situation, how the people who may have a sneaking suspicion that the woman they saw go into the ladies’ bathroom isn’t actually female by their definition, or how it could also seem strange to see that same person go into the mens’ bathroom. These all lead to dysphoria in any person’s situation in public places due to the fact that many choose to taunt or mock the person; however, with the help of Title IX these questions could start to vanish from the thoughts of many transgender students which Blad exemplifies with a quote in her article:

Surveillance is a mechanism of social control which involves watching and otherwise monitoring the movements, activities, conversations, and associations of people to prevent them from engaging in wrongdoing; to catch those who are engaged in wrongdoing; and to ensure that the public is protected from wrongdoers. Electronic monitoring, interception of letters and email, and telephone tapping are all examples of surveillance activities. An example of surveillance is Price Chopper putting up security cameras all over their premises. There are times where I have to go into Price Chopper late at night because either my sisters want different snacks or the stock of food in my household is low. I feel safer parking in the parking lot knowing that

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”:

Government surveillance is made with the intent to keep American society safe, usually made in response to major terrorist attacks to prevent future terrorist attacks. After the tragic events of 9/11 the Us government took measures to prevent future terrorist attacks from happening. One major act enacted was the Patriot act.

People might not think about being watched when they’re posting personal experiences in their life on social media. The government has the ability and justification to go through a person’s social media site, listen to phone calls, and read text messages as a way of narrowing down possible suspects for terrorism. The privacy laws in America are what allows the U.S. government to search the digital world for possible threats to the country. Although some say that privacy laws help American citizens keep their confidentiality for medical reasons, also as benefits for social security, I still maintain that privacy laws gives the government undeserved power and can give the impression of being watched .

In this day and age it is very hard to be secretive or private about affair, whether it be business or the other sense of the word when two people come together as forbidden lovers, ask Bill Clinton. One often acquires a feeling of eeriness while alone or when the phone rings and no one is there. And that individual labels these incidents as paranoia or thinks nothing of it. But what if this isn’t coincidence? What if someone has tapped lines and to ensure it is working the phone rings. Remember that “Collect call from”, the government you received yesterday? Wake up people. Surveillance of U.S. Citizens is real. The NSA is videotaping, tapping the phone lines and watching us watching them. That

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey conducted in 2011 that received responses from more than 6, 000 trans people, it was found that over half (53%) of them have claimed to have experience harassment not only at/in bathrooms, but other public accommodations as well such as hotels and restaurants and 10% of trans people have reported to have been physically attacked while at these facilities. (Tash par.1) These people are discriminated against almost every single place they travel to. No human being deserves to be treated this way as everyone is built relatively the same.

“Suspicion-less surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.” This quote was said by Edward Snowden, a famous whistleblower who was a former employee of the NSA. His widely known revelations revealed that the Unites States, the supposed utopian country, is becoming corrupt through mass surveillance. With that in mind, the USFG (United States Federal Government) surveils its citizens in order to uphold national security but abuses that power, defying people’s natural right of privacy, leading to totalitarianism, and decreasing the value of life.

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.

How would you feel if you knew you were being watched? How would you feel if every action you took online was being observed? How would you feel if you were being surveilled as if you were a criminal? Although mass surveillance is meant to find criminal activity and stop those responsible, it has a much bigger impact on the lives of innocent people such as limiting free speech on the internet through fear. Furthermore, it invades people's privacy and the power that mass surveillance gives the government can be abused. On top of that achieves all of these negative effects at a very high price.

‘The Racialization of Surveillance Technologies’ makes a case for how modern surveillance practices, technologies, and policy racializes certain groups in

This gives organizations information that the user may not aware is being recorded and shared. Without knowing it, we are leaving “ electronic fingerprints” with every mouse click, every phone call, is recorded and used for analysis purposes, which tend to be justified through the idea that it is used to help protect civilians from terrorist or other threats. Though surveillance is used to protect society, it can go as far as to even control and monitor society. In countries like China, the government uses surveillance to censor what is available to the public, and therefore allows the leaders of the country to maintain a tighter grip on society.