Persuasive Essay On Surveillance And Privacy

1295 Words6 Pages

With the advancement of surveillance technology, many citizens feel that their privacy rights have been violated due to homeland security and the threat of terrorism. Throughout history our government has implemented domestic and international surveillance as a way to safeguard our society from other countries. Now the question that seems to arise within our society is if the government is infringing on our civil liberties? Or is this indeed protecting our nation from imminent danger? The balance between national security and the rights of American citizens was forged in 1791 with The Fourth Amendment. This was implemented to enforce the notion that “each man’s home is his castle” and to protect “the people” from warrantless searches and seizures …show more content…

The domestic use of drones by the government has increased over the years. Unfortunately drone surveillance use remain unregulated due to slim privacy and civil liberty restrictions at federal level. With the advancement of surveillance technologies, drones will be used to track our every move violating our privacy. New drone systems such as the ARGUS-IS (Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System) are being equipped with five-megapixel smartphone camera sensors. Yiannis Antoniades, an engineer who developed ARGUS-IS, stated “You can see individuals crossing the street. You can see individuals walking in parking lots. There is actually enough resolution to be able to see the people waving their arms, or walking around, [or to see] what kind of clothes they wear.” With this and even more increasing technologies the most intimate details of our live may be potentially revealed without our approval. This could really threaten our nation’s privacy and actually violates part of our First Amendment rights which “prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion and abridging the freedom of speech”. Everything we do will be constantly observed by the Government and due to few federally regulated laws they are “free to roam about the