...Big Brother is Real and Active in Our Lives George Orwell’s novel, 1984, speaks of a world where an all-powerful dictator named Big Brother eliminates personal freedom and thought. There is much argument about whether or not the world in his novel ties in with our own world. Do we have enough privacy or are we constantly under surveillance? The argument on personal privacy is far from a new debate. Some people argue that the government has too much access to what we do, while others say that the government’s intrusion is fine. In our age, the digital age, everything is online and private information is available to the government. The so called “Big Brother”, or, our government and algorithms, is watching over US citizens in illegal and inappropriate ways. Private companies like Facebook or Google have access to what one searches on those sites, but the video “What Google and Facebook Are Hiding” demonstrates how those sites save and...
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...in the United States of America is, “Are we being watched when we do this?”. Some would say yes, some would say no. It all depends on who you talk to. Government surveillance has been a well-known and widely used practice for a very long time, and most especially since the increase in global terrorist activities. This practice can be traced all the way back to 2001, starting with the government phone tapping citizens under court restrictions. Coming in the later years around 2009, cameras were being placed all around the country in order to keep an eye on the safety of and activities...
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...Your phone can be watched at all times, even when it’s not turned on, and they can take anything that they want off of it (Schlesinger.) This issue is why the fourth amendment was created in the first place and clearly states that all personal information cannot be accessed without a warrant. The way the government gets away with this is through, “Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” This act makes it to where the government can spy on us without our knowledge unless it involves legal reasons like the case of a criminal. Then, once people are found guilty of something and taken to trial, it is almost impossible to win the case without evidence that you were spied on by the government (Diakun). Also, nine out of ten accounts in around 160,000 communications using section 702 were found to not be of the main goal which was targeting surveillance, therefore meaning that random and innocent people’s information was breached (Greene). Perhaps if we were informed of these invasions, and if it wasn’t kept hidden from us then maybe their reasons for it could be more...
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...Surveillance, of one form or another, has always been an active part of society. Surveillance is regarded as a way to monitor social activity of a virtual or physical nature with the aims of ensuring safety and stability for those who can be directly or indirectly impacted by what is occurring. The emergence of the Internet and other technologies has made surveillance more of an asset rather than just a vehicle of ensuring safety and protection. Media and internet companies have created platforms that maximize the exploitation endured by the user, with the objective of successfully capitalizing on the information being obtained. More many companies, the primary objective of social exploitation and surveillance is to increase their bottom line...
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...identification of terrorist suspects must be debated and understood before going forwarded to ensure due process for privacy concerns. They may have to be an understanding or “give-and-take. (Jenkins, 2012) Many of our security vs. privacy concerns stem from processes implemented after 9/11 for ensuring the United States was more prepared to detect and combat terrorist activities. Of course immediately after, many disagreed and argued that a balance between states security and civil liberty has to be maintained. Additionally, there was (and still is) a considerable requirement for the United States government to collect, process, and understand large amounts of video surveillance, biometrics, and Private Personal Information (PPI) in our efforts in combating terrorist activities. With respect to video surveillance (specifically in public areas), in the last 15 years, security/video cameras have been installed in major cities with the...
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...and limits political messages. Using McLuhan’s tetrad, this study examines how the internet is problematic for cop-watching groups. In particular, the internet is said to yield consequences through how it (1) enhances or intensifies how the viewer experiences political messages through speed, (2) retrieves the importance of the narrator, (3) renders previous media increasingly obsolete, yet opens up new avenues for commercial dominance, and (4) creates additional reversals or other problems for video activism, such as the mass proliferation of surveillance and formatting discussion in counter-productive ways. Introduction Take a look at the lawman, beating up the wrong guy, Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know, He’s in the bestselling show. —David Bowie, Life on Mars Accelerated technological growth and the proliferation of surveillance equipment has allowed for a significant increase in the breadth and power of surveillance assemblages. Despite authorities seeking to maintain control over...
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...Over the course of one day walking around campus, I counted 12 surveillance cameras throughout different locations. The first three I saw were in the Wells Library, two were in Cedar Hall, three in CVS, and finally four in Delta Tau Delta. During the normal course of a day I would not normally recognize how many cameras are watching me but when I started to notice how many there actually, we are under surveillance a good portion of our day when we are in public. Whether it is walking to and from class, going to the convenience store, or even being in your fraternity; we are being watched nearly all of the time. Attached at the bottom I have a picture of myself with one of the security cameras in Delta Tau Delta. We have one at the end of each...
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...that government should not spy on its own citizens and make decisions for them. This was actually the philosophy that the nation was based off, the Americans were tired of the British government controlling their lives, so they broke free and found the United States of America. But in today’s technologically advancing information age, the question is severely complicated with inventions like the Global Positions System, the World Wide Web, computer chips, the cellular telephone, etc. Of course, there are laws to regulate surveillance on these devices, but the invention of new technologies is passing these laws. As complicated as the question gets, I believe that the government is justified to immerse itself into the private lives and decisions of its citizens for a multitude of reasons. First, government surveillance practices can save lives, put criminals behind bars, or even find missing people, which definitely warrants the need for cellular surveillance. Another example of this justification is that measures like pat downs, body scanners, luggage scanners, and security guards at airports may be inconvenient for the passengers seeking to get on the plane, but will greatly increase the preservation of live on commercial aircraft. The last example to support this argument is in Ender’s Game. Ender had finally realized that the administrators and staff at Battle School controlled...
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...In my topic proposal assignment I will be talking about Mass Surveillance and Civil Liberties Since 9/11. In the weeks after 9/11 President Bush authorized the national security agency (NSA) to conduct a range of surveillance inside the United States. I will now give a summary about how mass surveillance is such a problem in the United States. Before one can understand how mass surveillance is such a problem they must know what it is; Mass Surveillance is the surveillance of a large portion or the entire population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by governments or their organizations. Mass surveillance came into effect to help government and law enforcement fight terrorism, to prevent social...
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...Electronic Surveillance of Employees Flor Leticia Rivera-Michel Strayer University LEG 500 Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance Niki Wilson January 25, 2011 1. - Explain Where an Employee Can Reasonably Expect to have Privacy in the Workplace. In this modern world is difficult to determine where our private life begins and ends and where our work life start, through the years we have seen how employees sometimes take advantage of the resources available to them in their workplace and use them for personal gain, this has led the company to have better control of the activities performed during employee work hours, such as phone calls and internet use. Employees are accustomed to using the technology made available in the workplace for purposes other than job duties. Although generally discouraged by employers, checking news headlines, doing some on on-line shopping, sending personal e-mails, or socializing on Facebook while at work are everyday occurrences. Many still feel as though these actions go unnoticed by employers and assume, incorrectly, that their activities remain private. (Communications of the IIMA, 2005) In my point of view our personal life had to be limited during of work hours, its notorious that some personal calls are necessaries, but we have to avoid abuses, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, if we are no abusing the companies resources available for us, we won’t be afraid of being monitored. The privacy employee...
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... | Executive Summary According to a 2009 survey conducted by American Management Association (AMA), the top two reasons employers provided for monitoring their employees were performance evaluation and quality control. Workplace monitoring may sound wrong, but it provides many benefits to an organization and its staff members, such as lower operating costs and high production rates. However, in the process of monitoring employees, employees’ privacy rights are violated mainly through computer monitoring, telephone monitoring and background checks. Productivity is one of the main reasons cited by employers for introducing electronic surveillance and employee testing to the workplace. Employers believe that corporate survival demands continuous improvements in employee productivity. Errors, poor products, and slow service hurt business. Therefore, monitoring and testing to identify and correct these problems are considered to be sound management practices (Wright). However, the following will analyze privacy in the workplace from an ethical point of view using three workable theories: Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, and Social Contract Theory. Privacy...
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...INFORMATION AGE AND INFORMATION PRIVACY UNIVERISTY OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 5 AUGUST 2011 | An estimated 35 million people use e-mail – either via their company’s computers or on paid networks. Unlike telephone calls, which by law are private because the phone lines are considered common carriers, a company owns its computer network and all the data in it. Seemingly, private email has been used against employees in everything from sexual harassment cases to charge of trade secret theft. Even employees who carefully delete their email cannot escape cyber-investigators who can hunt through a computer’s backup system to find just about anything ever stored in a computer. That is to say, the use of email is like having a video camera consistently running. Information Privacy can be defined as the relationship between collection and dissemination of the information. There is no doubt that there is a public expectation of privacy, however, the term itself has legal and political issues surrounding it. Information Privacy affects our personal and professional life. With the invention of the personal computer in 1970 and the internet reaching a critical mass in 1990, and the adoption of this technology three decades later, we society catapulted into what is known as the “Information Age”. The “Information Age” has allowed global network communication and shaped our modern society. With so many advancements in technology and the reliability of computers in our...
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...Apple Inc.’s Security Risks and Protections Provided to Their Customer’s Privacy Apple Inc.’s Security Risks and Protections Provided to Their Customer’s Privacy Apple Inc. is one of the leading innovators in today’s technology market. They have 424 stores across the globe, with 255 of those store being in the United States. Apple is expanding globally, as they announced plans to triple the number of stores in China within the next two years (Cheng, 2014). With Apple’s most popular products being the iPhone, iPad, and personal computers, one of Apple’s major concerns is the adequate protection of their customer’s private information. With major security breaches at large companies such as Target and Home Depot that have occurred within the last year, many companies are trying to strengthen their security measures to make sure they are not vulnerable to a security breach. In the last couple of years Apple Inc. has worked hard to provide the best possible protection to their customers, as they are continuously working to keep their security at a high level. Discussion Apple is not a stranger to security threats and infectious malware. Apple’s first major malware infection occurred just two years ago, in 2012, when over 600,000 Macs were infected with the Flashback botnet trojan malware. Flashback is a type of malware that targets flaws in Java. About half of the computers that were infected were in the United States, while there was also a large number in Canada, the United...
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...identifiable information provided by individuals through the use of Internet services such as: social media networks, email, and other networks that contain data bases full of personal information. If such data retrieval if not done careful, it can cause ethical issues for the companies that are involved. The ethical issues related to data mining are violation of privacy, confidentiality, and respect of persons’ rights. Issues that required the immediate attention regarding data mining are: What stops corporations from sharing personal identifiable information with other companies?; How effectively and ethically data mining is use by the government?; Is our privacy and confidentiality truly protected? Social network companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google provide users agreements upon joining their services. These agreements underline how the information provided by the user will be utilize by the company and it allows the user to understand how to protect their personal identifiable information while utilizing these social network sites. These companies pride themselves in protecting users’ personal information. However, what happens when the company or an unethical company employee violates these agreements? Personal identifiable information is then released to use as it pleases by the company or the individual that obtains access to this personal information illegally. On “January 19, 2006, when the Department of Justice subpoenaed Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...
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...negative influences can potentially plague your children. You can safeguard your family from unseemly and damaging connections by using computer monitoring software. Most monitoring applications offer a multiplicity of protections and a variety of tools. Our researchers tested and ranked monitoring tools to bring you an objective comparison of the best computer tracking software. Our top three products are SpyAgent, WebWatcher and PC Pandora. Read our articles on monitoring software to learn more about computer monitoring tools. Monitoring Good monitoring software includes tools to record all website visits and online searches. The software should have the ability to detect when a computer user accesses social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter or views online pornography. Some monitoring applications can capture blog posts, usernames and even passwords. Recording the transcripts of conversations that occur via chat and instant messaging clients is a frequently sought-after feature. Additional elements to consider are tracking file downloads, sent and received emails, web-based email and email attachments Tracking features may include recording the applications users launch as well as the duration and frequency of use. These components can...
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