Contemporary Society & Social Futures - Essay Example

These questions concerning surveillance and data monitoring require satisfactory answers. I assume that all these efforts at keeping check of citizens is aimed at protection of the country as well as improving services and product provision to consumers. It is also my assumption that maintaining surveillance requires legitimate and effective methods if success of this endeavor is to be achieved. This essay seeks to attempt answering the surveillance questions aforementioned. The world today is faced with many controversies especially in the United States of America.

This is attributed to the improvement in technology that fosters monitoring of every individual’s activities. Mostly, this has been achieved with the help of data mining techniques, which have heightened technological advancement. Technological advance has seen the old surveillance techniques like use of identification cards and border surveillance be replaced by new methods, including CCTV, mobile tracking, and DNA tracking (SSN, 2013). As a result, these techniques seem to infringe on people’s privacy thus restricting personal freedom.

Many would perceive this negatively, but as Lyon reassured his readers, it is a concept worth embracing. Panopticon, in his model, suggested that surveillance provides the scope needed for analytic interpretations of social issues (Brunon-Ernst, 2012). According to Panopticon, surveillance provides ways of guarding the insane, punishing the inveterate, and reforming the brutal and harmful. Instead, Lyon points out that the surveillance is a globalizing phenomenon that is applied to all groups of people, as opposed to be selective like Panopticon recommended.

This raises the question about who gets access to every person’s details, and the safety of such personal secrets, whether they will be used for the greatness or be exploited (Guardian, 2012). This issue brings about the ethical implications of various monitoring methodologies. There is a high risk of the public in case of security monitoring, and consumers, in consumer surveillance, being susceptible to information leaks (Lyon, 1994). This may be intentional or accidental, depending on the motives of those responsible.

In addition to this, their personal data may be stolen or be disclosed to the public. This then contradicts the human rights act that fosters personal freedom and privacy (Duff, 2013). Surveillance is a concept that has a myriad of applications. The state as well as business entrepreneur use this idea in for their benefit as well as that of the society. The state, in monitoring crimes and threats to the country, applies monitoring and in the health department. This concept is useful as it helps the law enforcement agencies and the national defense agencies like homeland security to monitor and detect any criminal and terrorist threats even before they take place (Ball & Webster, 2003).

In medical monitoring, screening, recording, monitoring, and tracking are the major methods that are employed in monitoring of patients. This occurs at both individual and the public’s interest. This is done to prevent and treat diseases through mass screening of parameters, and the sick are therapeutically assisted. In businesses, if service providers from both the corporate and the public sectors gain access to such monitoring information, then they use that information to help them in making informed choices concerning their customers (SSN, 2006).

This form of monitoring is of significance when