Essay on Surveillance and the right of privacy

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

Electronic monitoring is another widely used form of surveillance in which an electronic device is attached to an offender's body, warning that person that

Today, Canadian’s lives today are as translucent as ever. Most organizations especially the government constantly watches each and every one of our moves. By definition, surveillance is any systematic focus on any information in order to influence, manage, entitle, or control those whose information is collected. (Bennet et Al, 6). From driving to the shopping mall to withdrawing money from the ATM machine, Canadians are being watched constantly. With Canada’s commitment to advance technology and infrastructure in the 1960s, government surveillance is much easier and much more prevalent than it was hundreds of years ago. Even as early as 1940s, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics used punch cards and machines to determine who is available

Now : Surveillance cameras in most buildings (operated by businesses), and in some public streets (operated by police) to prevent crime. Although most of these cameras are operated by private businesses instead

The use of surveillance is becoming increasingly evident around the world. Surveillance is carried out in many different forms from simple methods such as video surveillance to more complex methods such as call and browser monitoring. Although it might seem that surveillance is undeniably convenient when pursuing a criminal or preventing a terrorist attack, it is often misused and many are beginning to question why there

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.

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”:

used to prevent more crime from happening in certain areas. Moreover, the cameras are used to

The novella, The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross and the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow both present the readers with the issues and impact of surveillance upon the main characters. The surveillance exists in each separate work of fiction for different reasons, but reasons which are actually identical at their core. In The Concrete Jungle, the surveillance cameras originated out of a need for security, and related to that, feelings of fear and desire for protection. Thus, one could argue, in this novella, the need for surveillance arose out of something very organic and common, something which unites all humans: a desire for security. In society today, places of extreme importance, such as banks, government buildings, museums, office buildings and expensive homes these places all have surveillance cameras stemming from a healthy need to keep these structures safe. The Concrete Jungle represents a warping of this desire as the UK is blanketed in surveillance cameras and demonstrates a healthy need gone twisted. The Concrete Jungle and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, while distinct in style and content, both portray the struggle of the individual in maintaining identity against extremely evolved forms of surveillance.

surveillance as a source of agency and power in order to break through the confines of

The right to privacy was not established as a constitutional doctrine until after the result of the Supreme Court ruling in the 1965 case of Griswold vs. Connecticut. The court decision was based on the interpretation of several amendments within the Bill of Rights. Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly state anything about the right to privacy, a combination of its sections was used as the framework for establishing the right (“Griswold v. Connecticut (1965),” 2007).

A more classical example of surveillance are closed circuit camera systems. These include typical security cameras in locations like stores and banks. They usually transmit what they are recording to a specific place and are not openly transmitted. The data is transferred to a security room where the videos are usually all displayed on multiple monitors. These are pretty secure since the only way to access the data is to physically even your hands on the cable that connects the camera system to the monitors that display the video.

First of all, it is important to know the definition of privacy, it is the right to control who knows what about you, and under what conditions. The right to share different things with the people that you want and the right to know that your personal email, medical records and bank details are safe and secure. Privacy is essential to human dignity and autonomy in all societies. If someone has committed a physical intrusion, or, in discussing the principal question, has published embarrassing or inaccurate personal material or photographs of the individual taken without consent, he is invading their right of privacy, which is in the article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Our society would not survive in the 21st century without the help of electronic surveillance. Safety is one of the main purposes of electronic surveillance. Safety is the state of being secure and free from danger of any sort. Today, many would rather give up their privacy for safety (Smithsimon). In fact, surveillance gadgets such as cameras, radio tracking chips and house alarms are used in many places to ensure safety. For instance, a parent can easily place a hidden camera in a stuffed animal in order to see how the babysitter handles his or her child (Public Places Have Eyes). Cameras are also used to ensure safety on school premises. According to the GCC College Safety website, "the college has an extensive system of surveillance