Digital Surveillance: Creepy or A Necessary Evil?

Big Brother is watching...

No, it's not a joke. It's happening all over the internet and while some aspects of digital surveillance are acceptable in my opinion others just feel like a violation of privacy.

Take a work environment for example. In my opinion a boss has every right to track your movements on a company computer. You're there to work, to complete a job and get paid for it and if they choose to make sure that's all you can do their that is their prerogative and they have every right to make sure the only thing you do is work. You don't have to like it, I wouldn't like it, but I would totally understand it given the fact that they pay you for your time and it's normal for them to expect actual work for that.



Another example is search engines like Google who use web analytic's to gather information about browsing an purchasing history. Business' monitor customers’ Internet behavior as well as what they search on the internet and then what Google does is tailor the advertisements you see to what it thinks your interests are via your searching and purchasing history. Is it okay for them to do this? I mean it can be slightly annoying, but I understand why they do it. After all Google is a business, they work with other business and in the end the goal is to make money. So showing us ads that will help with that and alerting certain businesses we might be interested is their way of doing things.

A last example of digital surveillance is the government monitoring citizens. I understand and respect that national security is important and that threats can come from anywhere, but that is why emails, conversations, chats, Skype sessions etc. are all swept for buzz words and things that might be dangerous or criminal. Unless one of those pops up the government should have no right to spy on individual people. It's against our rights as citizens and by doing that they're giving people a reason not to trust them.

References:

DIFFIE, W., & LANDAU, S. (2009). Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk. Communications Of The ACM, 52(11), 42-47.