Big Brother: State Surveillance in the 21st Century - Essay Example

BIG BROTHER: SURVEILLANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY The threats of national security facing many countries and numerous and significant and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. These threats that range from terrorism, cyber-warfare and espionage have necessitated the need for robust intelligence gathering capabilities. Even as countries grapple with the increasing need for more efficient and elaborate intelligence collection methods, there is the challenge of protecting civil liberties and privacy for the citizens. Rapid novelties in information technology have enhanced the opportunities for communication protection of free views and expressions. Furthermore, these innovations have enabled anonymity and enhanced meticulous information-sharing and cross-cultural dialogues. It is these advancements in technology that have increased opportunities for state surveillance, as well as other interventions into the private communications between citizens. It has often been argued that a dependence on a nebulous concept such as privacy is not the best solution to the resistance of state surveillance measures. It is paradoxical that it is the demand for privacy and protection of civil liberties that actually increases the need for surveillance, and hence, more surveillance, and so on. Nevertheless, a practical reality concerning overt state surveillance is that there the legal frameworks to provide a context within which covert surveillance are conducted. This reality must recognize that privacy cannot be regarded as an inalienable right, and surveillance cannot be regarded as a mere necessity. Keywords: surveillance, civil liberty, rights, state security, infringement, spying, privacy, security measures Numerous questions have been posed regarding the role of surveillance in modern societies. These issues include the appropriate thresholds that ought to be put in place for the collection of private information as well as the balance between civil liberties and security measures. There are also concerns regarding issues of accountability and oversight in regards to secret programs and the ethical implications of spying on the rest of the globe. Monitoring aspects that border on surveillance highlight the fundamental issues of citizen rights as well as the delicate relationships between governments and private institutions. Indeed, calls for the reconsideration of the social aspects that govern the extent and conditions under which surveillance is carried out have exacerbated over the last few years. These calls for the regulation of internet monitoring are likely to alter the shape of future technological landscape. Definitely, the debate concerning the use of encryption software by individuals, coupled with the right for anonymous speeches over the internet, is likely to become livelier. It is likely to take substantial amount of time to sort out the likely detrimental effects that this revelation will introduce on the global cyberspace (Taylor, 2002). It is noteworthy that concerns regarding national security and crime activities may justify the exceptional application of communications surveillance technologies by state machineries. However, laws that regulate that which would establish the legitimate, essential, and comparative state engagement in infrastructures surveillance are usually non-existent or insufficient in jurisdictions that have enacted them. It is these inadequate and inefficient legal backgrounds that have created fertile grounds for illegal and indiscriminate infringements on the civil liberties, including the right to confidentiality in communications. Consequently, concerns have been raised that surveillance techniques under such environments have continued to threaten the safeguarding of the citizen rights, including the right to freedom of expression and opinion. Furthermore, questions have been raised over the regulation of state surveillance to ensure that its justification if not prone to misuse by state machineries who are likely to abuse the surveillance techniques for unlawful reasons. It is plausible that changes in technology have been accompanied by changes in attitudes and perceptions about public and private communications. For instance, when the process of official phone and internet surveillance was initially implemented in the United States, it was conducted under strict legal regulation and sanctioning by the courts. Most people perceived the practice as a formidable threat to civil liberty, and hence the need for succinct regulatory measures. However, states have since expanded their authority to conduct surveillance, consequently lowering the legal threshold and extrapolating the justification for state surveillance. Generally, it appears that supporting legal frameworks have not advancement in tandem with the advancements in technology. As a result, many countries have persistently justified their surveillance practices using traditional legal conventions as their basis. This has proceeded without the recognition of that fact that the expanded capabilities that states now possess supersede the principles that such frameworks envisaged. In many other countries, it means that vague and broadly conceived legal regulations are getting provoked with an aim of legitimizing and sanctioning the use of excessively intrusive surveillance methods (Kadidal, 2014). Without updated laws that authorize surveillance conduct, and outline the extent of its application, citizens may not be able to understand how their rights are often compromised by state security machinery. As such, people may not have the confidence to pursue legal redress in light of such unlawful intrusions into their privacy. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that governments are increasingly adopting laws aimed at broadening the scope of national security exceptions, ostensibly providing for the legitimization of surveillance techniques without independent review or oversight. It is this scenario that has increased the likelihood that these surveillance techniques are very prone to abuse by state machineries in achieving objectives that lie from outside the scope of legal regulation. Surveillance, undoubtedly, may take two distinct perspectives. Firstly, it can easily compromise civil rights, for instance, by inculcating divisions within the society. Secondly, it can be a valuable tool in the detection and prevention of criminal activity. For the public to accept and give consent to several forms of surveillance, the state machineries must demonstrate accountability and transparency in their actions. This means that the government cannot be left with the unquestionable discretion to determine when, why, and where it conducts surveillance on behalf of the general public without any form of legal responsibility and/or regulation. For purposes of ensuring that surveillance is subject to regulation, then the state and the citizens must be subject to law (Deflem, 2008). The issue of cyber security is another concern that is indistinct from surveillance and online safety. This is because the separation between collecting useful information and intruding into personal networks is very minimal. The mechanisms that need to be applied as protection against cyber attacks overlap with the necessary tools needed to maintain protect privacy and avert unwarranted surveillance. On a policy level, cyber security is regarded in sturdy varying terms, often evoking the notions of national interests and foreign threats. It is plausible that reactions toward cyber security are likely to harm innovation and infringe on online civil liberties. The fundamental role played by a small number of major companies in the current digital age is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the scenario is increasingly becoming more like an indelible feature of the digital world. Therefore, it becomes unquestionable that the prominence of these large internet platforms defines the efficacy of any regulatory mechanisms. The dominance of the internet by these large but few companies is an issue that has become intrinsically linked to the issues of privacy, surveillance, security and personal freedom. In the process, it means that the large technological giants are becoming extraordinary powerful stakeholders in setting regulatory and monitoring policies of online content. Their dominance is so much entrenched that even governments seeking to scrutinize content on social platforms must seek authorization from these corporations. Ironically, civil activists who campaign for the protection of civil liberties online must engage with the same parties (Deflem, 2008). It is apparent that the core monitoring challenges of the Internet have changed significantly over the past few years. The regulation of digital speech and content flows is becoming more complicated. The massive scales of the social interaction platforms and digital expression that surpasses international borders are some of the facets that undermine efficient intelligence gathering mechanisms. Policymakers the world over continue to have received unsatisfactory results in their quests to control the Internet. However, due to the slow adaptability of formal monitoring strategies, private monitoring has occupied this regulatory niche. Many regulatory standards that have been developed by private platforms to monitor cyber activity on their sites are becoming the new form of law that constrain and guide user behavior (Cohen, 2012). In conclusion, it is clear that unregulated state surveillance remains a real threat to public trust, civil liberties, and the key processes of a democratic environment. In this regard, the possibility of misuse of surveillance by state authorities is a key concern in a free society. Some of the ways through which new surveillance technologies can be abused include restriction of freedom of religion or speech, suppressing lawful dissent and criticisms, providing local companies with unfair competitive edge over their foreign counterparts, and punishment of political opposition. In order to curb these potential abuse practices, there has been increasing need for state authorities to conduct careful assessment of the implications that may result from their surveillance conduct. Furthermore, there are growing calls for the importance of basing intelligence pleasures on evidence and data rather than on anecdotes and intuitions. For purposes of protecting civil liberties, surveillance decisions must be subjected to persistent scrutiny, including retrospective assessment, for purposes of ensuring that any detrimental outcomes are avoided. References Cohen, E., (2012). Mass Surveillance and State Control: The Total Information Awareness Project. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Deflem, M., (2008). Surveillance and Governance. New York: Emerald Group Publishing Kadidal, S., (2014). NSA Surveillance: The Implications for Civil Liberties. Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 3 (2); 1-44 Taylor, N., (2002). State Surveillance and the Right to Privacy. 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