Surveillance Technology In a World Without Limits
There are very little rules and regulations for technologies that are used to survey citizens according to Sharon Weinberger who goes into detail on the topic in her TED talk. Weinberger says, “It turns out these tools of surveillance are almost completely unregulated, because as of today they’re not defined as weapons. But they should be, and we need to regulate them that way”.
Weinberger is a journalist interested in new weapons that are advertised and sold to other countries and how governments and militaries use them. In her TED talk she talks about how the US government does not classify surveillance technology as a weapon. After 9/11, the Patriot Act was introduced by congress which allowed the surveillance of the United States citizens. It is possible that because the US government has so many ways of spying on its citizens and access to their information that they do not classify it as a weapon because then they would have to limit the surveillance they do and which is seen as a way of protecting national security.
Weinberger says that “recognizing that technology tracks who we are, what we do, what we say, and in some cases even what we think is a form of advanced weaponry. And these weapons are growing too powerful”. There are so many different ways for a person to be tracked because today it is hard to live without leaving a footprint. There are private companies such as Ancestry.com that have millions of DNA samples and could essentially share it and has shared it with the government in different instances.
The introduction of cell phones also wildly changed how a person can be surveyed. “And suddenly, you didn’t necessarily need the advanced capability of the National Security Agency or big telecoms to monitor everyone’s communications. In some cases, all you needed was access to that device in their pockets” as stated by Sharon Weinberger. Living off the grid today is not as easy as what it once was. Surveillance tech is not classified as weapons although it involuntarily intrudes on people’s privacy. And although millions around the world willingly get cell phones and participate in so many other ways where we give our information do we still not deserve some sort of privacy from our government?
