Many countries have been under massive surveillance through the years. The government normally carries out this surveillance or some sort of corporation under charge of the government.
Sometimes this happens Illegally. Other times legally. Whether it's one or the other, it may or may not require approval from a court. When using surveillance technology to observe a person, or maybe a whole country, it's often claimed to be fundamental for the fight against terrorism, to prevent social turmoil or protect the national security. Whatever the reason may be it's a very issued topic.Watching people with such advanced technology we have today or will have in the future may have a scary impact on people.
Is this surveillance necessary and can it affect our society? This is the subject I will study and discuss in this essay through four texts, three of them from 2001 and one from 1949. 1 In the text "The Spy In Your Refrigerator" (Simon Davies, 2001 ) we as readers are presented to a future In 2020 of substantial Intrusion by surveillance technology. He predicts cameras moving from public areas and Into our homes and biometric identifiers to finger- and hand-scan individuals and perfectly identify them.Davies is also bothered by the growth of workplace surveillance where employees gets their phones tapped, emails read and their computer work is monitored.
Tracking devices are supposedly supervising trips to the bathroom and personal medical data is being examined. I-TV services are currently being developed to draw information on viewer habits and financial transactions to create a profile of the costumer, and according to Davies, our privacy "is and will be eroded in countless other ways". He's very septic of these Increases in surveillance and tracking of our physical and electronic movements.Davies believes the potential uses of this technology could possibly harm or completely take away our privacy. Simon Davies also wrote the text "And the Spy who loves us all".
In this text, he discusses the ongoing Increase In surveillance In Scotland and The united Kingdom. DNA tests are used to keep control of every person arrested in Edinburgh, Scotland, and in UK to keep control of runaway fathers. He argues that the many countries participating in this development are coming surveillance societies and once again that this technology is taking away our privacy which he means is "the natural partner of freedom of expression".The next text "Japan: Voyeuristic Games" is written by Michel Tammany and Yves Bough.
It describes the selling and uses of gadgets for spying on spouses, neighbors and co- workers. It's miniature digital cameras with micro-chips and miniature recorders. These cameras are easy to hide and have been, according to the text, abused. People have been recorded without knowing It, students In the locker room by their teacher ND a cameraman from a national television network has recorded people In their homes.Parents use a service called "lambdaј'(where are you) to watch their children's whereabouts by putting tracker microchips into their cell phones and monitor other people on a completely new level without them finding out.
The last text is from 1949 and it's a page taken out of the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell. In this fictional text we're presented to a disappoint society where everything you do is monitored and examined. We're introduced to Big Brother who's always watching behind the camera. Every sound and movement is picked up by this surveillance technology that dominates throughout the text.
In conclusion, the increase in using surveillance technology can affect the society in many ways. If it affects negatively or positively I'm not to say, but the statements from the different texts on the subject are bending more to a paranoid kind of subjective than realistic and objective. Especially Simon Davies negative view on surveillance comes on very clear throughout the two texts. He keeps mentioning how it's an intrusion of privacy and he even compares this development to the disappoint society resented in the George Rowel's Nineteen Eighty-Four.But this DNA sampling, finger-scanning, phone tracking and video surveillance doesn't tick me as signs of the rising of a disappoint world.
It's a lot of control, yes, and overly controlled societies have turned out rather disappoint, like the mass surveillance going on in North Korea where every aspect of every person is being constantly monitored and computers are checked by authorities regularly to make sure everything is registered with the government. But surveillance technology isn't the only thing gone wrong in a place like North Korea.It's definitely not the most important factor even though the last text from George Orwell might indicate so. We need to look at this more objectively and acknowledge that this is a huge step forward in technology in general instead of letting us scare of what might happen. Recording people without them knowing is very extreme and the president of United States listening to phone calls of his citizens is an invasion of privacy, but we cannot Just ignore the fact that this technology is also being used for good.
Sometimes it is necessary for protection and there's fine line between use and misuse.
