Privacy Concerns in Modern Society

Boundaries

With the realm of possibility for the field of technology growing exponentially, there seem to be no limits on what it could do. Humans have used it as a tool to test the limits of the world around them and to accomplish incredible feats. However, as technology continues to evolve and advance, people begin to question whether its unregulated development is encroaching on citizen’s constitutional rights to privacy.

Prior to the USA FREEDOM Act, telecommunication services and intelligence agencies were brought under scrutiny for giving their customers data to NSA without notice or permission. The issue was immediately swept under the rug by providing the companies with retroactive immunity from prosecution. However, the problem rapidly resurfaced when “former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a trove of classified documents revealing the extent of NSA surveillance, including cooperation with foreign intelligence services and the storing of metadata, or information about the communications it monitored” which showed the “powerful software that enabled the NSA to collect unprecedented amounts of data encouraged further investigation into the constitutionality of both the USA PATRIOTS Act and the FISA Amendments Act” which were created to support NSA’s domestic surveillance. To try to combat this Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin tried to correct it with the methods used for gathering intelligence so it discusses the privacy concerns. However, the passing of the USA FREEDOMS Act has done little to oppose the government’s encroachment on our privacy. Instead, the government now uses other avenues to collect and store people’s information, but they are not the only ones participating in the deception. Technology powerhouses, like Google and Facebook, collect people’s data and utilize it to designate advertisements that will better manipulate their audience.

In the classic, 1984, Orwell creates a dystopian society, Oceania, that has been continually manipulated by the government through their stronghold on the media. The citizens are forced into submission through the threat of Big Brother, and the Ministry of Truth writes and rewrites history to enforce the lies that are spread to serve the party. The totalitarian society that is enabled by technology “has come to stand as a warning of the insidious nature of government-centralized power, and the way that personal freedoms, once encroached upon, are easily destroyed altogether” (Fitzpatrick).

Generation X and Millennials have grown up with the birth of technology and seen it become an integral part of people’s daily life and become essential to their livelihood. As the generation that has never known anything but war and being able to know all the world’s answers with the click of a button, we must decide where to draw the line on technology’s power and its encroachment on our God-given rights.