1. Larry Jennings<br />ACSG 575<br />Essay #2 – Surveillance Midterm<br />Introduction / Basic Issues: <br />Surveillance takes many forms. When many people think of surveillance, they think of the old spy movies where the guy in the light trench coat follows the guy in the dark trench coat. Or they perhaps think of the Cop movie where the 2 cops sit in the car watching someone for hour on end eating donuts in the car. Or perhaps we could even look for the scene in that same police movie where the cops have gotten a warrant for a wiretap or a wire to be put on a guy.<br />All of those scenes are pretty good indicators of the old way to see what people are doing. Those ways required people: People to watch, people to organize, people to tell other people what to do. Any breach of those was a federal offence, after all, if the cops had to get a subpoena for a wiretap so should everyone else.<br />Let’s fast forward to the Information age of today though. Everything including phone calls runs through a computer of some kind. Everywhere you go, there is a data trail. Some directly link you to a data feed, some link your house, computer, cell phone, toll way transponder, TV, car, essentially not only taking much of the guys in the trench coats out of the picture, but much of this information is being put forward with (and without) our consent by us already.<br />But exactly what can the government do with this information? How does the government get this information? And lastly, is it right for the government to be collecting so much information about everyone in the name of national security?<br />Now this is not exactly a new argument, even back in the days of the photograph and the telegraph, the government, in various forms both local and federal, has been used to track people. (SOURCE) But only after the invention of the computer has the ability to track people and put various bits of information together to find patterns and really find people.<br />The computer has allowed us to do things in such a faster more efficient manner that a task that was very man intensive such as checking credit card receipts, has now been changed in a way where huge amounts of information that would never be humanly possible before are now checked in seconds.<br />So the question becomes, Should the Government have access to all of this information and shouldn’t the government at the very least need to notify someone that they are being looked at. Lastly, how much information is too much for the government to have? At one point does the government know so much about you that the idea of privacy is moot? And should the government have the ability to access all of this information in real time? <br />While I am sure that this information is not always in real time, not for a lack of trying, but it is getting there. A typical realistic example occurred a few months ago when Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square was apprehended using the following technologies. <br />1. The VIN on the vehicle was tracked back to the person who had sold it<br />2. Via Craigslist to the suspect<br />3. The suspect had called the vehicles seller as well on a cell phone. This record was traced back to point of purchase where camera footage had been taken and was used to get an ID of the suspect. It was also used in an attempt to locate the suspect using the phones built in GPS system; however, the suspect had already discarded his phone.<br />4. Surveillance camera were also used capturing the suspect taking a test drive of the vehicle from the seller.<br />5. Al of this information was used to place the suspect on the no fly list and la last min check had determined that the suspect was on a plane on the runway. Air traffic control called the passenger back to the gate.<br />In total this process took just under 48 hours. And it is hard to argue that a system like this is not useful in connecting people to potential terrorist activity. There is a lot to be said, for example, of the anonymous balding gentleman that was also captured on video and originally thought to be the suspect. <br />What about other people caught on surveillance, or are having their cell phones monitored, and lastly what if all of this is done and the investigating officials are wrong? Ultimately that’s the big question.<br />If we as Americans might lose a little privacy to prevent another terrorist attack, what proof do we have that the rest of our privacy is not being ignored as well? Give an inch and the government takes a mile?<br />How can we trust the government, which holds most of the cards in this situation, is following their own regulations (with the assumption that they do have adequate regulation when surveying people), has hired trusted people to do this kind of work, and even with that being said, the US-CERT team which is responsible for monitoring all of the other computer systems that keep much of this information, has been found to have a staggering amount of security flaws.<br />If everything that should be kept private from others was kept private, I think that there is not much of an issue. But not knowing? That’s the biggest concern of them all.<br />From a moral perspective, it (I think) depends on the school of analysis you use. A Utilitarian would probably question, who benefits most? And say that the nation as a whole would benefit but for a few people that might be “inconvenienced” by having their information pried into by the government. If we were to step that out some though, (as you typically have to do to fully analyze this situation) a utilitarian against using all of these for security would have to question is there still utility when the people no longer trust the government out of fear of having secrets revealed? Could that cause a potential revolution? Would the loss of moral affect the US worker and shrink an already faltering economy? And really while it would be useful to all citizens to secure the nation, where does that funding come from?<br />I think that Kantianism, would probably be much more useful because the motive is important. A Kantian approach would be to establish a categorical imperative for this situation. One obviously is, Should everyone be secure. That is a default yes. But then you look at the issues of Duty and it would be the duty of a person to give up some privacy in order to life freely. But then we would have to question, are you really free? Then we are also supposed to treat people with respect, is it really respectful if the government hears some of your most personal information? Is giving your privacy just a means to an end? Should people (as a democracy) propose a vote for weather to let the government infringe on certain rights such as the right to privacy?<br />Has it always been like this? <br />Surveillance really does follow back to the time and tested method of just watching someone. According to a graph prepared by the ACLU however, some surveillance methods have been around previously:<br />Photography, Telegraph, Fingerprints. The problem with these methods, even in their day, is that they are long and tedious to work with. Pictures could take hours to develop, fingerprints could take forever to analyze.<br />The ACLU has a chart on their website that shows advances in technology and the legislation that has followed it. While technology has advances, the legislation was few and far between it until after the invention of the computer. Even then, it was not really until the internet was created that this data started to gather in mass quantities and was easily accessible. <br />In talking with the other members of our group, I think it is interesting that none of us really is opposed to the government taking stock of everything that we do. While some of us fine the idea of it quite disconcerting, there is no overall objection to it. However our Utilitarian analysis can justify this behavior. However, our Kantian analysis suggests that ethically we can’t support it.<br />