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The Internet Is A Surveillance State By Bruce Schneier

643 Words3 Pages

The internet, government, and corporations are all out to get you, or at least that is what Bruce Schneier would like convince you of in his work titled “The Internet Is a Surveillance State”. Schneier identifies many reasons as to why a surveillance state is a negative, such as constant tracking, habit profiling, and lack of privacy both in public and in the comfort of your own home. What Schneier fails to address, however, is that a surveillance state isn’t always a negative, and quite possibly it is a necessary evil to prevent bad things from happening around the globe. As Whitney Cramer states in her essay titled “Giving up Our Privacy: Is it Worth It?”, Schneier “fails to acknowledge” that the “loss of privacy to protect the innocent …show more content…

The nature of this essay is much different, this is because instead of just delivering facts, as Schneier did, Cramer delivers facts to refute the statements made in “The Internet Is a Surveillance State”. Since this essay is essentially a rebuttal, it carries much more persuasion power then Schneier’s article; this is because the reader is now enlightened to the mistakes/oversights delivered by Schneier. Also, the ability to spout facts fails in comparison to the ability to rebut someone else’s arguments, especially when those facts are not fully analyzed or understood. Cramer’s essay does a very good job of persuading readers to believe in her side, as well as persuading the reader against the statements in Schneier’s …show more content…

The main issue with Schneier’s article, as Cramer points out, is that he fails to recognize the potential benefits of an internet surveillance state. Not only that, but the first thing he does in his article is give three examples of the good it can do, but he plays them off as negatives. Schneier destroys his own persuasion power when he fails to completely understand what he is describing, because if the writer doesn’t fully grasp the intricacies of the topic, then how is the reader supposed

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