Implicit governance by technologists has ruled the internet since it started, but if the world wide web becomes government regulated, pesky costs to consumers and manipulation from big tech companies and internet providers will surface. Tech knows what is good for tech and the government is failing to try to keep in tact the internet we have had such liberal access to for so long. There is a line to be drawn between individual privacy and national security, but unfortunately, that line is all too blurred in America’s democracy. The government seems to be ignoring leaders in tech who know what is good for the person and what is necessary on the government level. Therefore, Big Brother is a reality because, “since the very first governments came to be, these organisations have been locked in a constant technological race with the people they seek to protect.” (This quote came from an article on Addicted.com called “Big Brother: Technology & Government”) So, we should trust the innovators in tech, and not the big companies that want to sell our data to the government. It is not “protection” to be constantly monitored, and many countries cannot afford that kind of government regulation anyway. So, having surveillance would widen the gap in government power and poorly affect already underdog countries.
In 2011, AT&T asked that information about its finances be excluded from Freedom of Information Act requests, because the statute has an exception for “personal privacy.” The Court unanimously rejected this claim—and Chief Justice John Roberts ridiculed it in his opinion. That exception, he wrote, “does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.” I do believe that the government was right to deem this claim for personal privacy as incorrect as AT&T is indeed a corporation and not subject to individual constitutional rights. This I will discuss more in my next writing, but for now it makes a great point that we need to draw a line on what kind of privacy is granted to which people or companies. People should be able to keep secrets, but companies have such a large impact that they should not be granted the right to have complete privacy from he government, as they could be plotting something and we wouldn’t know! And this is why we have whistle blowers.
Edward Snowden was a whistle blower, which means that he leaked government protected information for what he believed to be the good of society. Snowden merely provided proof of something that was essentially already common knowledge because of past whistle blowers who tried to reveal the same things. William Binney (also an ex NSA employee directly involved in the agency’s spying operations) and Russell Tice tried to reveal the same issues, and Snowden confirmed the words of the scale and lawlessness of NSA snooping. Government surveillance is biased and therefore immoral. NSA collects data on specific targets, revealed Snowden, Furthermore, we have been watched when we did not even know it, such as when the NSA captured images from everyone’s webcams for their facial recognition technology. I therefore believe that government surveillance is an unnecessary precaution that the government should allow their people more say in.
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