Government Surveillance vs Privacy :: Security vs Privacy

Spying is nothing new to the world. History books tell us that ancient civilizations like the Roman Empire, Egypt, Chine, India, and so on used it. On top of that, 1900s regimes like the Former Soviet Union and Nazi’s Germany used spying tactics around the world wars. The main use of spying at that time mostly was for political and military advantage. These countries were successful on spying. However, in the 21st century surveillance is used in different and very complicated way. So many crimes and terrorist attacks forced governments around the world to use electronic surveillance to protect their own people. This electronic surveillance is very complicated and you don’t even know it is happening and you are the target. The US government is the main leader on this. For years the US government used eavesdropping and wire tapping to catch criminals (Landau 301). People debated on the issues, but it was left unanswered. In 2013, surveillance became the nation wide debate topic, once again after Edward Snowdon’s leakage of classified information from the NSA. From the leaked information evidence shows that NSA is surveilling millions of innocent people, illegally. Now, the US government took the use of surveillance to the next level. This level is unprecedented and unheard in human history. The government uses internet to surveil people’s private information; this got my attention and I started to search for reasons. And NSA makes only one argument when asked why they surveil. TERRORISM or CRIME. Then I asked myself; why surveil innocent people who have done absolutely nothing? In this case, I looked around some sources and decided that the government should stop surveilling people illegally. The government should find different ways to stop terrorism and crimes or they should only surveil people with history of violence. On top of that, people should also worry about big companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Citibank, and so on. This is because they have also our private information like the government and there is more chances of private information leaking. Like I mentioned earlier, several things happening around us that we don’t recognize in today’s world,. One of the things is the surveillance program. When I walk around in the city I live, I see cameras installed almost outside of every apartments complex, big buildings, and so on. However, that is not what worries me the most.