Social Media And Communications: Course Analysis

Privacy and safety of citizens is common in today's society, as well as the government looking over their shoulder at all times. As an example, George Orwell wrote a book called, "1984" which in it gave an outlook of society being taken over by a party. Government surveillance is different from protecting and bringing safety to the citizens, it violates their freedom, privacy, and human rights.

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

From a recent increase in crime rates surveillance in public entities have increased. Many individuals argue that public surveillance is an invasion of privacy and feel uncomfortable with their every move being watched. Others believe without public surveillance, crime rates would be increased. In a country of over 300 million people surveillance is widely used to identify criminals. Since public surveillance reduces crime by 20 percent and protects over 300 million lives, it is not an abuse of power; in fact it balances the use of power.

This occurs on the basis that they claim it is necessary to protect against terrorists, criminals and political rebels, and to maintain control of society. Mass surveillance has been widely criticized for being a violation of privacy rights, and to prevent political and social freedom. In some cases, however, the interests of society be seen as more important than the individual's privacy so that privacy can be restricted.

Before the technological age, there were thousands of years in which the only way to record an image was to painstakingly spend countless hours painting it onto a canvas. Now, we have the ability to record video, in amazingly high definition, with a camera lense that is remarkably small. With the boom that technology has had, we have not been able to keep up with the laws that surround it. One such controversy, is the use of mass surveillance. We have been unable to decide if it is ethical to breach everyone's right to privacy in the name of supposedly preventing crime. After a careful analysis of the benefits and liabilities that mass surveillance brings, it was found that mass surveillance is a breach of people’s right to privacy, and is impractical in preventing crime.

As American citizens we want to live in a country where privacy and protection can live in harmony. This is the political dispute surrounding mass surveillance technology, because the reality is that perfect harmony isn’t possible at this time. Social groups in conflict over this issue are divided into two categories; government agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and most prominently the NSA versus civil society groups like American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as well as powerful people like Edward Snowden, and technology companies including Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, and Google (Nakashima 2015).

Government surveillance can’t ever be fully eliminated or eradicated, therefore it must be modified or reformed to make it more acceptable, moral, and effective overall and cost wise. The first step would be to implement some sort of limitations on what and how the government can use surveillance. It should especially be limited in the way that the undertaking of bulk data collection should be eliminated completely since it has been proven many times over to be almost completely ineffective. It should also be limited to where the government can only use surveillance on known users or threats. Doing this would assist in making government surveillance more moral and acceptable and infringe less on constitutional and inalienable human rights,

One of the major problems with surveillance is that it can be used by governments to shut down new ideas that may improve society. While these ideas may not always work out, shutting them down before they get a chance to improve society, may not be the best way to go about things. An example of this is the ideas of Nelson Mandela, and his idea on equal rights for people of colour. His ideas landed him in prison 27 years for treason. He would later become president of South Africa. Imagine if his ideas had never been able to catch on because he had been arrested before he even got the chance to tell anyone what he believes. Imagine if black people were still treated as second class citizens. This is by far the greatest risk proposed by surveillance. If all new ideas are suppressed, then humanity will not have the chance to progress. While some of the ideas and worldviews that

The 21st century had brought an infinite number of technological advancements whose purpose is to make the lives of new, developed world much more manageable. These digital technologies that have revolutionized our daily lives have also created minutely detailed records of those lives. As a society, we are not quite sure why surveillance is bad and why we should be wary of it. To an extent, the answer has to something to do with privacy, but we lack an understanding of what privacy really means in this context and why it matters. We have been able to live with this state of affairs, mostly because the threat of constant surveillance has been condemned to the idea as science fiction and a failed totalitarian state.

Think about it, people being watched for everything they do, like what they are reading, writing and even when they are communicating with others while sharing their own thoughts and opinions on political and social issues. The loss of personal privacy can have a psychological impact on citizens, for it implicates that we can’t criticize the government on its flaws or wrongdoings without

Privacy is the freedom from interference. It is a state of being free from public attention, and being watched or disturbed by other individuals. Every individual deserves to have the right to privacy, but the question is to what extent and at what state is considered an invasion of privacy. Information privacy is the right to control over one’s personal information, how it is collected and used. Many believe that people have to relinquish their privacy for safety. Law enforcement officers, however, thinks that video surveillance does not identify or prevent crime. Several cities which had previously used the surveillance had to abandon them claiming that they are an unnecessary expense. Even the most powerful video cameras, for example, in the United Kingdom did not stop crime or enhance public safety (Strossen n.d).

Philosophically, privacy has multiple functions, states, and approaches, including communitarians who sometimes favor limiting privacy for the “greater good,” or view privacy as valuable to society as a whole. Economically, privacy has commercial and market value, with financial tradeoffs. Sociologically, surveillance is viewed in terms of its affect on individuals and society in a behavioral sense.

After viewing our assigned videos, I experienced a range of emotions and thoughts that affected me on different levels. These emotional responses ranged from expressions of apathetic dissonance to enthusiastic nods of agreement. What I discovered was a developing themes of human expression that equated to unfulfilled needs and/or voids. Therefore, I will attempt to engage and discuss the eight video’s assigned for Evangelism, Photography and Social Media class. I will analyze the attempted message of each video based on the developing theme of “ the four unmet human needs” first through a theological lens, then as a sociological issue, and finally how each video raised conversations about these issues.

Since the industrial revolution, society has continued to grow larger, and more interconnected than ever before. Aiding in this process has been the advancement of technology and ideas. With the extensive advancement of technology, an equally sizable debate on its ethical implications has developed. In recent years an ethical dilemma has arose pertaining to the use of government surveillance. While the increased surveillance of citizens by the government is beneficial to the safety of society, the government might infringe on citizen privacy rights.