The Swamp logo

Big Brother Is Watching You

Things You Need to Know About Government Surveillance

By Tursynai AlikhanovaPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
Like

First of all, government surveillance should be stopped. People have to fight for their rights to be free. According to the Pew Research Center, where Americans were asked about surveillance, national security and privacy, 74% said that there is no need to sacrifice liberties for the sake of safety, while ten years ago the number of people against government invasion was 60%. After Edward Snowden revelations in 2013, the debates against surveillance heated up all over the world. One of the main victories is that U.S government let the Patriot Act expire. “Ending the mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. The United Nations declared mass surveillance an unambiguous violation of human rights” (“Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance”, 2015). According to the interview given by Mr.Snowden to HBO channel, the mass surveillance has started after terrorist attack in 2001 in New York, however it yet haven’t stopped any single terrorist attack in U.S and the major reason of surveillance nowadays is political stability. Especially in nondemocratic and authoritarian systems. Snowden leaks also impact on American views about anti-terrorism policies. It cannot be justification anymore, 37% of Americans think policies have not gone far enough to adequately protect them, but have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties (“ Terrorism Worries Little Changed, 2015 ”).

Within the golden age of technology development, surveillance became ubiquitous and available in every part of the world. In my opinion, one of the reasons of thriving surveillance is open market. According to various estimates, surveillance market valued at approximately $3-5 billion dollars not regulated. Companies which offer these technologies continue to prosper and every country in the world has access to these technologies.

One of the biggest nonprofit organizations defending the right to privacy and fighting against government surveillance is called Privacy International. They make worldwide investigations and expose the names of the companies which serve the tools. According to their research report The Global Surveillance Industry in 2016, there are 528 surveillance companies, which are based in economically advanced, large arms exporting states. They are the United States of America, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Israel. These five countries import technologies into the Middle East and North Africa regions. Privacy International propose the implementation of export control applied to surveillance technologies. After a 2 year campaign, the agreement has been signed by 35 countries, including Russia, the US, and most European countries which started to approval of new export controls, so that before selling the most egregious tech surveillance, companies should have special license. As for me, I feel a little skeptical about the agreement, it is necessary to ensure the enforcement. I don’t think that every government will implement all the control measures that have been agreed, they will definitely find loopholes to protect their own interests.

We cannot deny that sometimes surveillance is necessary, however it should be legitimated and consistent with the rule of law. Unfortunately, many countries have not yet adopted the relevant legislation. Instead, they simply pretend as if surveillance is not conducted. Even in countries with a developed, mature democracy, abuses are possible. People should advocate for strong national, regional, and international laws that protect privacy. There should be clear criteria for determining who may be subject to surveillance, and how findings should be processed and disseminated. Such criteria and the relevant rules should be publicly available.

While these policy decisions require a group effort and it is usually limited to specific countries, whereas the technological solutions have the potential to be global, Bruce Schneier, the author of the book Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World thinks that in order to solve this problem, we need to act in two directions, and it concerns not only state and corporations—we, the people, have work to do. I want to mention some of techniques, from the book, that help us to protect personal information and defend against observation itself. First of all, it is lock monitoring. This is the most important thing we can do to protect ourselves. Probably, the National Security Agencies of large powerful countries will be able to get around all of your efforts, if you are aimed personally, but mass surveillance based on easy access to our data. Privacy enhancing technologies, or PET, can help you lock mass surveillance. For example, there are simple and easy to use plug-ins for browsers that monitor and block websites from following you while surfing the internet: Lightbeam, Privacy Badger, Disconnect, Ghostery, Flashblock, and many others. Encryption is the most important PET technology. Hard disk encryption with BitLocker from Microsoft or Apple's File Vault is completely transparent and affordable for any user. Some of these methods are more complicated, some are easily understood.

Overall, the government surveillance battle has already started and in order to save our right of privacy, we need to solve this problem together otherwise it can lead to irrevocable consequences.

References:

Gao, G. (2015, May 29). What Americans think about NSA surveillance, national security and privacy. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/

Schneier, B. (2015). Data and Goliath: The hidden battles to collect your data and control your world. WW Norton & Company.

Snowden, E. (2015, June 4). Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance - The ... Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/edward-snowden-the-world-says-no-to-surveillance.html

The Global Surveillance Industry - privacyinternational.org. (2016, July). Retrieved from https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/global_surveillance.pdf

cybersecurity
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.