Is national safety more important than privacy?

Is national safety more important than privacy?

With the rise of current problems such as terrorism, the issue with personal privacy has emerged again. In the era of internet and smartphones, information exchange is easier than ever. Today’s people probably use electronical devices in a daily manner to communicate with others or manage businesses. Somehow in minds it stands as a private way of discourse. However, data from our devices are easily accessed by authorities. This means that the seemingly private online data is nearly public and is easily accessible for hackers. Surprisingly, since the beginning of the internet era, serious internet laws have not been made. Nevertheless, the violation of personal data should be illegal and not to be accessed by higher authorities as it is a violation of our privacy.

Back in 2013, in the US, Edward J. Snowden leaked classified documents to the news that revealed the existence of government surveillance programs. This means that the National Security Agency gathers phone logs and data from millions of American people’s devices for a later analysis. Of course this became a scandal. From this point on the world as one doubted their data’s safety.

The main point supporters of national supervision could nominate is that the governments’ main job is to grant safety and welfare to its citizens and that these searches and controls will help prevent attacks and loss of life. However, most of the data collected have no real message or at least no relevant message for the secret agencies. Potential criminals tend to use messaging platforms that are encrypted and cannot be accessed. This leads to the conclusion that most of the data these agencies read are ordinary private conversations, banking account information and personal businesses.

 Conspiracy theory creating is not the purpose of this paper, still people need to take into account the possibility that governments abuse our data. By this mean, they could gather information about each of their citizens, which could lead to trust issues between governments and citizens. What is more, as it was published in The Guardian, in early 2016, the US intelligence chief, James Clapper, has acknowledged for the first time that agencies might use a new generation of smart devices (including household items) to increase their surveillance capabilities.

There are attempts on finding a middle-ground in this problem, yet it is more than certain that this monitoring is not the best way of filtering out the dangerous elements of society. So while the possibility of us getting hacked depends on the authorities, we can make some precautions for our security. The key might be in the way people use the internet, altering our method of using online platforms, for instance, avoiding posting sensitive information online and using encrypting softwares can offer a viable solution for those worrying about their data.

All in all, the ultimate decision is maybe not in our hands and the regimes have the potential to use or abuse the data they are given. However, there are methods for ordinary people to protect their online presence. And last but not least, people must become more aware of their online life, as it has become a part of our everyday life. 

Works cited

1.Greenwald, Glenn; MacAskill, Ewen; Poitras, Laura. “Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations”  The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance Accessed 13 Nov. 2016

2. Ackerman, Spencer; Thielman, Sam. “US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you” The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/09/internet-of-things-smart-home-devices-government-surveillance-james-clapper Accessed 27 Nov. 2016