From a personal standpoint, I care more about how public react to the issue of government surveillance. After watching all the 5 videos on class blog, including the interview between John Oliver’s and Edward Snowden, I thought that the number of people who pay attention to this issue is decreasing because there are no clear evidences to show this action would affect normal people’s life. Meanwhile, government announced that surveillance programs are for national defense proposes and that statement gained more supporters especially after multiple terrorist acuities happened around the country.
According to the article that I found on PewReserach Center, 54% of Americans disapprove of the NSA surveillance while 42% approve of the program. Furthermore, people also say anti-terrorism policies have not gone far enough to adequately protect them.
Nonetheless, most Americans still hold strong view about the importance of privacy in their everyday lives. As 73% of adults say that being in control of who can get information about them is “very important” and 93% say “important”. From these numbers, we see that when it comes to more self-interested questions, people will choose the options that favor to themselves. When government trying to keep terrorists away by using special methods, Edward Snowden actually put public and government in an embarrassing position mainly because our society dose not have the capacity to handle situation like this.
The takeaway for me as a MIS student is that government performs mass data analysis through collecting privacy information such as email and phone calls from data centers. In the future, there could be a safer, faster and easier way to analysis these data without storing privacy information but analyzes it through computer or other form of technologies not human.
Link: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/
There're few thoughts that I would like to add on this. After watching some videos and interviews regarding Edward Snowden, the reason he gave about why he was doing this is that he wants American and people around the world to notice about the U.S. Government surveillance, although which is for saving the country’s security. Moreover, he wished that the American people can choose the way they want. Through the information leaked by Edward Snowden, we recognized that our privacy has been easily invaded in our daily life while we were using Google searches, Gmail, text message, GPS navigator, and so on. Actually, most of our position and action can be monitored by the government while we are connecting the Internet. This situation is starting to upset American people and also lead the society start to think about the privacy and security problem.
ReplyDeleteFrom the article about what Americans think about NSA surveillance, national security and privacy, we can tell that the perspective that people had on whether there is a need to sacrifice civil liberties to be safe from terrorism has changed over years. Although, the problem of terrorism created more damage to the country, since 2004, the percentage of people who said they should not give up privacy and freedom for the sake of safety rise from 60% to 74% in year 2015. The government should understand our community is willing to fight against terrorists without compromised freedom and privacy.
Furthermore, from the article, most Americans heard about the government surveillance program and aware of it, and some of them even changed their behavior for avoiding monitored. The action by changing behavior actually indicates that the American people do care about their privacy, even though these changes would limited their freedom by doing anything they would like to do. However, they would prefer to make some changes by keeping themselves a little bit room for privacy.
Link: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/
Great comment, Ying, and good article. I especially like the change in perspective from 2004, shortly after the escalation of the war in Iraq and Afghanastan. I wonder if it's changed in a year? People are pretty fickle about their views, but then Apple comes on the scene and we are talking about it again.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say, good article, Bangkai. Thanks for the link and discussion.
ReplyDelete