Government Surveillance

In espionage and counterintelligence, surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, activities, or other changing information for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting people. Although it is focused on the overwatching of the terrorists, National Security Agency usually collects information about every single person, regardless whether this person is actual terrorist or not. I think that this factor causes the biggest controversy over the government surveillance.

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American computer professional, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former contractor for the United States government who copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments. In 2013, he was forced to move into the Russian Federation, after he had revealed some information about government surveillance in Hong Kong. Now, he has a status of refugee and he possesses the right for the asylum within Russia. In early 2016, he became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that aims to protect journalists from hacking and government surveillance. By the time, I think that he did not like what the US government keeps doing (domestic surveillance) and so, he tried to reveal some information about what people in America go through and that the government of the USA has always had the thorough control over them.

In my opinion, he did not do something extremely extravagant that could have even made the authority of the US to revoke his passport after revealing of some insignificant information about espionage over the people around the world. Yet, I think that he is more kind of innovator rather than a hero or a traitor because he was trying to convey American people the thought that not everything that the American government actually does is good and directly helps people. He was trying to brighten that Americans are under the constant control and that they have to deal with it to not become slaves of their own doings afterwards.

In the video reportage of John Oliver, it was said that 46% of American people do not carry or are not concerned about the government having a watch over them. On my mind, this is kind of unplausible information because I think most of the people around the world know that the information they share with others is only their and nobody else’s. Yet, I think that those people must be concerned about who has an ability to see, listen or read what they wrote, recorded, or said a while ago. I, in turn, am really careful with the information I share because I have always known about this very government surveillance and I do not want my information that I share to be used one day against me. Therefore, all people should do the same thing, especially if we are talking about the Internet. Everyone should be intelligent and careful about what he is writing on the Internet.

In my opinion, this excess of power from the side of the US government, in particular, is a real problem for the modern society and people who live within the country have to be overwatched at least less than they are right now, in 21st century. The main reason why the government control needs to be slightly weaken is because everybody has its own opinion that they can spread out within the mass media, of course if we are not talking about the call for terrorism or making some uprising. So that may be a reason to keep overwatching people by the US authority and I do not really know what to say about that. Nonetheless, I think that the government surveillance is fine unless it does not interact with the private lives of people being under this surveillance. Finally, I think that the authority has to not monitor many of the people’s actions that it does monitor in fact nowadays.