Should The Government Be Allowed To Surveill Its Citizens

Superior Essays
In order to ensure the safety of the citizens of the United States of America, the US government should be allowed to surveill its citizens under the correct circumstances. After the bombing of the World Trade Center in September of 2001, security measures have been put in place in order to prevent similar events from happening. A person’s digital property should be subject to the same rules and regulations as their physical property. Of course this doesn’t mean watching every waking move, like in George Orwell’s 1984, “Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.(26)”. As a web developer and …show more content…
How can one do anything if they aren’t guaranteed security? After terrorists hit the World Trade Center in the fall of 2001, security measures were put in place to prevent a further attack. So the same should apply to the digital world. With that said, the fourth amendment certainly applies to digital evidence just as it does to physical evidence. Without proper probable cause, there is no reason to surveilling innocent citizens. Which is why there need to be stricter regulations on NSA employees and what they’re allowed to access. If someone is trying to hide something, digital evidence plays a key role. Secrets never stay a secret because someone or something out there knows the truth. Orwell said it best in 1984, “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself…(37)”. As a student in Computer Science, I know that nothing on the Internet or a computer is truly deleted -- merely moved to another location. There’s no such thing as 100% security and 100% privacy, but it’s something that the American government needs to balance efficiently. But overall, security should always come first before any other aspect, as stated in the United States

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