ISSUES BASED ON SURVEILLANCE- OUR PRIVACY/ OUR RIGHTS

I see someone looking through my personal information on my laptop and through some personal information I have left near my computer but I do not say anything.

In reality I would, probably slap that person or want to kill them because they have no right to look through my information.

BUT

Everyday we are being watched, everyday we go on social networking sites and sites that we love purchasing clothes or books from and give up our information freely without knowing the true harm that is involved.

The question that is so hard to answer is how important is surveillance and has it gone to far.

In a group we as a group made a Pecha Kucha based on surveillance that takes place on social networking as well as looking at mass surveillance in general. Firstly, focusing on social networking sites , being a person that uses Twitter and occasionally Facebook the information I found out as a fellow user made me feel very uneasy. Because, I am aware that the information that I display about myself can be viewed by the general public; however knowing that my information could be sold to corporate leaders through the owners of social networking sites should be classified as a invasion of privacy.

Is this age that we live in today the selling of information  is not classified as stealing?

Conversely some companies and social networking sites could argue that the reason they take our information is because of collective intelligence.  Which is quite helpful for us as consumers who for example want to buy products on Amazon or eBay the information collected by these companies help our search, But that the only good that can come from it.

When companies collect our information on social networks not recognizing or should I say not caring that Online social networking sites are meant to be out of individual desire or pleasure additionally allowing the users new ways of constructing identity, meeting friends and colleagues. Not only is this disrupting our privacy but moral right to have freedom that is being taken away from users everyday.

Correspondingly surveillance may have to bypass our moral rights to provide safety for us. For example, when we are at the airport there are numerous amounts of checks just for the safety of the country and general public. So without these checks and the enhanced technology used to provide security and safety to people, security risks such as, the 9/11 and other terrorist attacks may put us in danger. 

It could be said that we as users of the Internet spy on each other day (users of what). We are virtual peeping Toms who love to see what is happening in other people’s lives.  Michel Foucault discusses the idea of the panopticon in the context of the surveillance in prisons, in the case of the 21^st century that we live today. It could be construed that we live in a digital panopticon. The ideas of David Lyons and Zygmunt Bauman stated that we live in “liquid society”. Both these theorists convey that the panopticon is no longer just a CCTV camera or doisers files but the modern society of surveillance is consumed in gathering information through social networking and loyalty cards etc. Nonetheless, we are dissolved into different forms of surveillance with RFIDS, mobile phones, biometric scanners and fingerprint and face recognitions to access of phones.

Some people do not notice the CCTV cameras or what they do or present on the Internet about themselves. Others do and are offended but in my opinion surveillance is a required technology in the country but has outstretched its boundaries in many different circumstances.