An Opinion on The Subject of Internet Privacy

May it please the court that I have brought forth my take on the following topic: Internet Privacy. Internet Privacy is, I believe, something that should be respected, unless of course there are extenuating circumstances. Everyone has surfed or stumbled upon websites that they would not want to be known that they had visited such a site. However, if we’re talking about child sex trafficking, the police shouldn’t have to wait to obtain a warrant.

This problem often persists when teenage girls send scanty pictures to their boyfriends who then show all their friends. It gets leaked onto the internet and it is sadly ridiculously hard for police to resolve this. You have to file a report, which is probably is the worst part, because if you’re underage, your parents must get involved, and it’s all very embarrassing. But to trace the IP address, they need a warrant. Everyone hates those involved with child pornography, which still includes teenagers since they are still under eighteen, but the police can’t do anything about harassment unless they have a warrant. This is an incident in where Internet Privacy shouldn’t matter. That little girl is someone’s daughter and she’s already being punished enough.

We also had an incident with Apple and the San Bernardino gunman. The government issued an order for Apple to unlock the gunman’s phone and Apple refused. Finally they had to bring in a hacker who supposedly used to work for Apple. He finally unlocked the phone. This was a matter was what could be considered national security. The gunman was technically a terrorist. This is one of those times that we shouldn’t have to obtain a warrant to break open a phone.

Internet Privacy is a privilege, it’s not a right. If you haven’t done anything wrong, there isn’t any reason to be worried. We obviously wouldn’t want some bad eggs to abuse the equipment able to break into computers or phones, which of course is why warrants are needed in the first place, but I believe in the instances of national security the government shouldn’t need a warrant. Be it far from me to say there are no bad eggs, but if the government really were able to monitor emails and such, it might go a little bit farther in the war on terrorism. If you have nothing to hide, you won’t have to worry.