Maeve Gustafson Final Project

Maeve Gustafson

March 2014

Digital Media
Professor Williams

Big Brother Is Watching

As the twenty-first century begins to enter the digital age, society is leaving behind old analog technology, and buying each new generation of data-transmitting smartphones. However, this huge technological leap forward does not come without tradeoffs. Digital patterns and algorithms are now able to predict your next step based on the digital footprint you leave on every website you visit, every ISP you use, and every text you send. The average internet-user is being watched and is highly traceable. Every year since 2009, the United States government invests almost ten billion dollars towards its National Security Agency, whose main priority is to spy on the digital information produced by its own citizens, as well as some information from foreign diplomats. This type of massive data mining occurs without any public knowledge or consent; and the collected terabytes of personal information is stored until the government pleases. Recently, the NSA has come under major scrutiny from the American public due to some of its sensitive documents being leaked by Edward Snowden. The NSA whistleblower case of June 2013 has officially brought to light the extreme measures of public surveillance taken by the U.S. government, and has caused serious debate over the ethics of this practice, and whether or not it should continue.

Government surveillance is not a new practice, and it has been ongoing since at least 1952. Since then, government surveillance has become an extremely common practice in the United States since late 2001. After The Patriot Act passed in congress in 2001, wiretapping has started to become increasingly less restricted and easier for the government to access. Advocating for public safety, the U.S. government has been able to twist its secret security measures into seemingly helpful routines to protect the greater good, which in turn have opened the flood gates for the National Security Agency to spy on everyone and everything. Under the guise of collecting information assurance to keep the United States safe from foreign threats, the government is able to also collect whatever information it wants from the general public. This type of information gathering includes stockpiling cell tower dumps, Google search history, text, Skype, and IM messages, as well as phone calls. Since 2001, the U.S. government has become adamant about spending almost 14% of the government's entire intelligence budget on the NSA due to the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. Since then, it is clear that the United States government has made intelligence gathering a top priority.

The National Security Agency uses many methods to collect the American public's data, and also collects and stores massive amounts of it. The United States government is interested in data mining people's metadata, including what people are doing on all of their devices, what places they have been, what websites they have visited and who and what they interact with online. Digital footprints are everywhere, and the government has ultimate access to all of this information, supposedly in order to protect the United States. However, it is an asset for the government to keep digital information on everyone in the event that information on a specific target is ever needed or wanted. The government wants to be more than just the protector in this case, it wants to have complete, while silent, control over its citizens.

While the U.S. government would like to have information on everyone and everything, while still keeping their surveillance a secret, some of its citizens feel differently. Former Central Intelligence Agency employee Edward Snowden released some of the NSA's classified information to the public in the “NSA whistleblower” case of June 2013. Via encrypted emails, Snowden communicated with journalists at The Guardian to disclose roughly 2 million intelligence files. Snowden has since been persecuted and is currently in exile from the United States and in asylum in Russia. Snowden has been on the run from the United States government since he decidedly leaked private government information under his own name. In an interview with The Guardian in Hong Kong in 2013, Snowden reveals his ultimate goals in releasing these NSA documents to the public. Not only did Snowden broadcast private digital NSA documents, but he also disclosed his own personal information in the hopes that the American public would follow his story and become aware of their collective stalker: the United State government.

The ethics of the government's secret practice of stalking its citizens have been widely questioned since the Snowden Whistleblower case recently came into the limelight. The public has been becoming increasingly concerned about their personal privacy on the internet and on their digital devices after learning how much data the NSA has been collecting. The issue the NSA raises is not an easily solved conflict. The United States government argues that the tax money is well-spent on the hunt for digital terrorists and radical threats of the like. However, the reality is that the real threat is not that readily available to them, but regular American citizens who do not have firewalls in place, private VPN access, and who also do not participate in illegal activities are the only ones being spied on. While the NSA's intentions are good, in practice, the protection is not as widespread and useful as this much espionage is worth. The value places on the public's personal privacy is starting to outweigh their protection, due to the fact that innocents are being constantly watched with no prior or just cause per individual. While some people may have "nothing to hide" from the NSA's security, there is still a borderline between privacy and protection, and that border should still exist as we enter the digital age.

The threat of personal digital privacy being invaded in the twenty-first century is not only very real, but also currently occurring without the user's consent. The United States government secretly keeps tabs on every single internet user, cell-phone owner, and even anyone existing in the digital universe. Individuals no longer have personal privacy, people are only seen as numbers and data clusters. According to the National Security Agency, based on your internet history and web interactions, your entire life and everyone and everything in it is able to be measured in gigabytes. While this type of local espionage is still in practice in 2014, the ideas Edward Snowden has brought to the table cannot be erased from people's minds. Awareness is the first step that the Snowden case has taken in fighting back against an issue the American public never even knew existed.

Works Cited:

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