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Essay / The Ethics and Appropriate Use of Government Surveillance
Details of the global surveillance revelations disclosed by Edward Snowden cast doubt on the ethics of government surveillance. Surveillance abuse will lead to loss of privacy, affect people's daily lives, and cause the government to lose credibility. However, the data and information collected by government surveillance also contributes a lot to the prevention of crime and terrorism. Data-driven research findings could improve public wealth and save more lives in the long term. One solution that could prevent abuse of the technique is to create a third-party agency to oversee government behavior to avoid unnecessary disclosure of personal information. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayGovernment surveillance without proper supervision and evaluation will decrease the rate of people's participation in discussions of social issues without decreasing the crime rate as expected. Moreover, it could even threaten the personal safety of every member of society. For example, in order to recognize and combat cyberbullying and cybercrime, the South Korean government issued a Real Name System Law in 2008 and intended to crack down on rumors on the Internet as well as on cell phones. However, in 2008, malicious comments only decreased by 0.9 points and at the same time, the average number of online forum participants decreased from 2,585 to 737 depending on IP address. It showed that this type of government surveillance does not protect people from crime and cyberbullying, but does decrease online participation. Finally, the South Korean government ruled that the real name system was unconstitutional and abandoned it in 2012. Additionally, in September 2018, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) enacted measures to make creators online discussion groups such as QQ and WeChat responsible for the information provided by other users. shared in the group. The same month, Liu Pengfei, the creator of a WeChat group, was arrested for discussing political and social issues within the group. This policy of the Chinese government undermines freedom of expression and has caused the Chinese to reflect on the reliability of their government. In these areas, governments have adopted radical surveillance policies without sufficient evaluation and supervision, and not only has the personal security of the population not been improved by these policies, but also some innocent people have been victims. politics and human rights were violated. This disadvantage must be taken into account and avoided when establishing and implementing new monitoring systems and policies. However, with proper use, the surveillance technique could also be a powerful weapon against terrorism and crime. In 2017, the FBI managed to arrest a man planning a Christmas terrorist attack by detecting his pro-ISIS and pro-terrorism content posted on Facebook. And not limited to comments and posts, even search history is also useful for tracking suspects. In 2008, a computer engineer named Brad Cooper killed his wife. His wife was initially missing for two months until a random person discovered her body. At first there was no evidence indicating who the murderer was, but soon Cooper's Google map search history showed that he had searched.