Introduction
State scrutiny and the constant warnings about the American culture and law has turned out to be a pertinent component of the surveillance systems in the contemporary livelihood (Fuchs 2013, p.673). Despite the surveillance warnings being typical and hence commonplace in the country, their application is hardly specific, considering that the big part of the populace does not even seem to realize why surveillance is good or bad in the first place. While privacy is usually cited as the primary reason behind the lack of confidentiality in surveillance, the application of the term "privacy" in the surveillance context is often confounding (Ball 2010, 88). Nevertheless, the concerns about inspection in most cases have been wary, bearing in mind that it has been relegated to failed totalitarian nation-states and the fiction of science behind the philosophy. While discussing whether surveillance does more harm than good, it is relevant to highlight diverse evidence based arguments as well as the counterarguments in order to realize an insightful understanding of the subject.
Surveillance in the Contemporary World
The warning signs of surveillance are no longer founded on fiction or conspiracy theories in the contemporary world. Indeed, the twenty-first century has been characterized by globalization and the effects of technological inventions, elements that have significantly influenced lives at an individual level and government operations. Governments have been on the verge of war in the past decade and at present times because of the role terrorism is playing both in the national and global arena. Security threats and hence the pressure behind a concealed collection of data makes of such information in undisclosed ways in most cases; thus curtailing public rights to privacy and confidentiality by government machinery (Fuchs 2013, p.676). For example, there have been speculations that the US government has bought many private databases and inclined them to the National Security Agency (NSA) so that analysis and decryption of data therein are done after the detailed interception and storage across global internet communication frameworks (Ball 2010, p.89).
Legal Protection Against Surveillance
While the rule of law protects Americans against undisclosed surveillance by the government and other institutions, the illegal acts in controversy with such laws do not hold as long as the state uses secretive means to gain and secure the data (Diffie " Landau 2009, p.43). Nevertheless, even after such loopholes are realized, the law of the land does not protect against surveillance in entirety, and the partial protection only compromises the legal intervention on the issue. Furthermore, many cases have been turned down by the judiciary concerning the controversial issue of surveillance, citing too much suspicion to account for on the part of the complainant, which does not hold against legal challenges by the accused parties. For instance, the American supreme court overturned the ruling in the case of "Clapper v. Amnesty International USA", after citing massive speculation and mere suspicion on the part of the complainant (Zureik " Salter 2013, p.33).
Debate on the Harm and Benefits of Surveillance
Therefore, the fact that a substantial proportion of the populace (79 percent) does not understand comprehensively why, when, and how the government carries out surveillance, it becomes hard to justify the logic behind the more harm surveillance is causing than the good based on reason (Kroener " Neyland 2012, p.147). While there are many attempts to confirm the harmful impacts of surveillance in the society, it has always proven inconsistent before the law. Therefore, based on literature, history, and pertinent scholarly material, on the one hand, surveillance could be doing more harm than good, but on the other, the effect could be neutral but with more benefits than harm. Furthermore, a workplace approach and a more coherent understanding lay a platform to embrace the fact that surveillance moves beyond the vagueness of apparent hypotheses over the subject; and hence the lack of universal conclusions on whether it does more harm or benefit.
Disadvantages of Surveillance
On the one hand, surveillance does more harm than good because of the limitations and infringements it asserts on the civil liberties and social activities of the citizenry. For instance, when people are having conversations through different forms of media about controversial and sensitive issues in the country say politics and elections, reading, thinking, and other social problems; then surveillance would become expressly compromising in such liberties conferred to the people by law. Moreover, it becomes cumbersome for the people to affirm and enjoy exercising their new, deviant, and controversial ideologies, based on the secretive intellectual surveillance being practiced in the country (Kroener " Neyland 2012, p.143). As such, intellectual privacy is essential for individuals to be protected from a compromised government framework that expressly limits the intellectual freedom. On the other hand, surveillance causes more harm than good because of the impact it has on both those under watch and the ones watching over them, especially when it comes to the platform of power dynamics. Indeed, the challenges that come with power and surveillance between the two parties on opposing ends is characteristic of coercion, discrimination, selective application of the rule of law, and such biases are ingrained harms (Zureik " Salter 2013, p.121). Consequently, surveillance would be doing more harm than good because of the deteriorating grounds for justice, and the selective execution and blackmail of individuals for being opposed to the powers that be, other than the primary purpose for the surveillance schemes in place.
The Indispensable Logic of Surveillance
As opposed to the disadvantages and harm surveillance has caused in the mainstream society, it is essential to consider that there are critical principles that link the public to the government and the private sector alike; which harmonizes the indispensable logic of surveillance in the application, therefore. First is the understanding that the public and the private sector are not discreet segments of society, as they are conjoined by the factor of governance and hence the government. Therefore, dealing with surveillance is a solution that should be the sort to make all the three institutions comfortable with such a position, by not compromising the roles of any. The reality that terrorism is inevitable when the intelligence is not available, and government participation is not at the forefront deprives the society of its fundamental rights to safety and protection of property. Therefore, surveillance is worth compromising, but first, the government must ensure safety through this great tool by all means possible (Xu " Dinev 2012, p.17). On the contrary, secret surveillance is against the dictates of the law, and hence such frameworks should be confiscated and proper pathways of surveillance formulated, to support the indispensable logic behind the reason for surveillance. Furthermore, total surveillance is questionable, and monitoring of internet transactions and activities in entirety by the government ought to be contained, to justify the sanctity behind the process. Finally, it should be realized that surveillance does more harm than good, because it compromises the private intellectual space, leads to blackmail and coercion, as much as it is against the doctrine of the law (Kroener " Neyland 2012, p.145). Therefore, as much as surveillance can be justified for the few critical roles it plays on intelligence and national security, it does more harm than good because of the interference with the social, political, economic, cultural, and legal space it causes.
References
Ball, K., 2010. Workplace surveillance: An overview. Labor History, 51(1), pp. 87–106.
Diffie, W. " Landau, S., 2009. communications surveillance : Privacy and security at Risk. Communications of the ACM, 52, pp. 42–47.
Fuchs, C., 2013. Political Economy and Surveillance Theory. Critical Sociology, 39(5), pp.671–687.
Kroener, I. " Neyland, D., 2012. New technologies, security, and surveillance, Available at: .
Xu, H. " Dinev, T., 2012. The security-liberty balance: individuals’ attitudes towards internet government surveillance. Electronic Government, an International Journal, 9(1), pp.46. Available at: .
Zureik, E. " Salter, M.B., 2013. Global surveillance and policing: Borders, security, identity.
