Wendy's Arguments Against The Surveillance System

The two readings are focused on the same issue, that is, the surveillance systems that are being employed in the states in America in an effort to improve the security of the people or in a bid to make the people feel that they are safe. These surveillance systems are supposed to be used to detect suspicious individuals in the society and thus the law enforcement agencies can deal with such cases before crime is committed by suspects. The surveillance systems are growing and many are being adapted to the public sectors and are being used to monitor the people in a certain region their behaviors and the likeliness of suspicious activities. Surveillance systems have been updated from those that existed few years back and now have features such …show more content…
They claim that the people only are to use them because certain events happen and they get intimidated or frightened and think that these surveillance systems will make them feel safer. However all this are false promises by this systems. According to ACLU, these systems have so many errors that render them inefficient in their task of security. Good example is the facial recognition systems that are used in Tampa, Florida. The systems have shown great failure and cannot even differentiate between the male and the female images. These errors are further made worse by the human errors. The database that is used for the facial recognition systems does not only include suspects but also individuals ho the police are willing to interrogate. This makes it harder for the system t identifies criminals and innocent people find themselves entangled in this mess ("Trading Liberty for Illusion Analysis Essay Example | Topics, Sample Papers & Articles Online for Free," n.d.). Another shortcoming of these systems is that they are prone to abuse by the officers running them. These officers use them to stalk other people and also intimidate them. These systems have been compared with various leaders in history who passed various laws, acts and bills by instilling fear to other members of the public. The surveillance system does the same. Wendy views these systems as threats to privacy, liberty and physical safety which don’t go in line to the reasons they are put in place. People adapt the invasive and repressive security technologies not because they want to but because they are afraid to challenge them. Most people take comfort in the false promises of these