I think national security becomes a concern when its efforts bring fear to those they are trying to protect. I understand that there is a certain degree of surveillance that is effective in keeping us safe and I believe people are approving of that. However, there is a point when a Big Brother dystopia is a concern. I do not believe that narrative is not complete paranoia, as countries like China seem to be heading towards that direction, especially with the way they collect data and their new social credit score system that they are going to be implementing next year. When a government continues to grow in surveillance power, there seems to be no going back as governments are typically reluctant to give up power. One can argue that currently our central government is the strongest it’s ever been in terms of have power over the country, which can be due to increased technology as well as evolving political ideologies. Yes, while we may currently be in a state of concern for our national security due to countless tragic events that have occurred in this century in this country, we need to be careful how we react to such events in terms of giving our government more power. We need to consider the reality of the power that is given will likely difficult take back, and that can be a problem in the case that our government becomes influenced by troubling ideologies. For example, currently our government seems to have troubling anti-immigrantion sentiments and a lot of technology has been used to deport many innocent migrants. History shows that any group of people can be the target of the government. I like how Seun mentioned how the FBI worked against the Black Panther party, as this is an example of how the government can abuse their capabilities to harm Americans. I think more needs to be done, like possibly making another amendment, to draw a line for the protection of our privacy. I’m not sure where that line should be drawn, but I think it should prevent our government from using technology to know everything possible about us. If this is a democracy, then I would say privacy needs to be paramount, because losing privacy takes away the power of the people and it can suppress the voice of the people. Without protection of privacy, the power goes to those who are able to infiltrate people’s privacy, and if the government has that unlimited ability, then we may find ourselves under a totalitarian regime. I think it’s good that our country has this back and forth on the issue. Everyone has different perspectives and many make fair points. We may never get it just right, but the important thing is that we avoid the extremes of either total lack of privacy or complete ignorance in terms of national security. Our government has a fair need for gathering intelligence, they just have to be kept in check, as all parts of our balanced government should be.
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AuthorMarcos Salamanca Archives
October 2019
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