Analysis of Surveillance Systems - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The views are largely others’ views and The Economist, to a large extent, engages in reporting and discussing the features of the developments rather than criticising the systems. The other article discussed in this paper is “Trading Liberty for Illusions” by Wendy Kaminer published in the 2nd issue of the 22nd volume of the Free Inquiry Magazine. The focus of the article is broader than The Economist’s as it argues in general about all security measures and systems. The article rejects security systems as illusions and builds a strong argument against security systems on the basis that they are invasive and repressive and threats to civil liberties.
The strategies used by The Economist makes its article argumentative to some extent and descriptive and expository to a large extent, whereas those employed by Kaminer makes her article more an argument. To illustrate, The Economist’s article on surveillance systems is largely a detailed account of the various developments in the ICT enabled surveillance systems, their features and how they promise to deliver greater and more effective security systems. An example it gives is of security systems capable of studying biometric features or physiological posture and movements. Another is of a system that can identify not only suspicious behavior but also correlate them to their contexts to help determine whether a particular action or a person is actually a threat. However, Kaminer uses examples of various security systems, both historical and current, not to focus on their description and development, but to use them as evidence to support her thesis and advance her argument that security measures have been only illusions and tramped on liberties. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More