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Bautista Vanessa

Ms. Alcaraz

English 11 p.6

21 March 2018

Government Surveillance: Why It Doesn’t Work

Government surveillance has been around for a very long time. In 1965, the use of

cameras for surveillance became more popular and common as police put them up in public

places. Did you know that government surveillance doesn’t actually decrease the rate of crime in

most countries? In the 1980s, the UK put up more surveillance cameras and despite the rapid

increase of cameras, the country had no noteworthy drop-off in crime at the end of the century.

Also in 1973, there was a Supreme Court ruling called US v. US district court where the

Supreme Court ruled that the government must comply with the Fourth Amendment when

surveilling an alleged domestic intelligence threat. In addition, in 2013 a non-partisan group

estimated that the NSA related surveillance was going to cost $35 billion in business.

Furthermore, numerous government agencies intrude upon the private communications of

innocent citizens and catalog ‘suspicious activities’ based on vaguest standards. The

government’s collection of this sensitive information is itself an invasion of privacy, but its use

of this data is also rife with abuse. Government surveillance and censorship, especially pervasive

surveillance, invades privacy, costs too much, and is ineffective.

Government surveillance and censorship, especially pervasive surveillance, is ineffective.

The Foundation Free Education asserts that, “there is little evidence that all surveillance and

security programs added since 9/11 have caught or prevented terrorists in any significant
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number” (Author). Having a lot of surveillance won’t put an end to violence and won’t stop any

real threat and same goes for censorship. Additionally, there’s no reason why we should have

more surveillance and censorship if it doesn’t help stop or put a halt to anything involving crime.

Furthermore, the government has tried to control censorship and has been unsuccessful most of

the time because “the government rarely obtained a search warrant first, Google recently

revealed” (Quain). This just demonstrates that aside from wanting to control censorship, the

government can’t even obtain a search warrant most of the time and when they do, no real big

outcome comes out of getting people's information. In the end, pervasive surveillance and

censorship doesn’t work or help at all.

Selective government censorship and surveillance does not mean that they’re will be

more safety. The main argument presented in the article, “Big Brother? US linked to new wave

of censorship, surveillance on web”, by Quain is: heightened surveillance, restrictions on Internet

freedom and censorship is necessary to protect property rights. Some argue that “increased

surveillance and censorship help,” prevent cyber espionage, fight child pornography, and protect

national interests such as nuclear power plants from hackers” (Quain). In other words, there is no

real evidence that heightened surveillance and censorship actually put a stop to anything

threatening and that it increased the amount of safety we have. Despite that, the Foundation of

Free Education refutes this argument by showing that surveillance and censorship does not

increase protection and safety. “There is little evidence that all the surveillance and security

programs[...]have caught or prevented terrorists in any significant number,” the FFE claims

(FFE). In conclusion, there is little evidence that surveillance and censorship help promote

safety.
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There is more violence, criminal activity and terrorist attacks in countries that have less

surveillance. The Reporters Committee For Freedom of Press claim that, “Alaska’s

eavesdropping ​laws prohibit the use of any electronic devices to hear or record private

conversations without the consent of at least one party to the conversation​” (TRCFFP). This

demonstrates how Alaska doesn’t have mass surveillance and in order for the government to spy

on them, they first have to obtain the person's’ consent otherwise they can’t and they would be

breaking the law if they did. Having to need the person’s consent changes everything in this

situation because that means that the government can’t spy or watch on everyone. This also

changes things when you look at Alaska’s crime rate. In 2014, it was reported that Alaska had

25,018 crimes which included: 41 murders, 20,334 property crimes, and 555 rapes (Wikipedia).

This proves that where there is less surveillance, there is also more crime. Maybe if Alaska put

up a little more surveillance, instead of having none at all, they could decrease that number of

crimes because it is a lot and something should be done to try and stop all the crime and violence

happening there. Lastly, there is more violence and crime activity where there is less

surveillance, for example in Alaska.

Government surveillance and censorship, especially pervasive surveillance, is too costly.

Maya Wang asserts that, “As a part of a new multimillion- dollar project in Xinjiang, the Chinese

government is attempting to ‘build a fortress city with technologies” (Wang). The Chinese

government is wasting way too much money on camera surveillance when government

surveillance doesn’t even work. Why waste money on something if it can come up to cost almost

a million dollars? They shouldn't waste so much on something that’ll be very ineffective.

Additionally, all over the world, “local governments are spending billions of dollars
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implementing sophisticated technological systems for mass surveillance” (Wang). Notably, all

across countries governments are adopting the action of putting up mass surveillance to try and

stop crime and violence. Governments should take a look at the facts and see that mass

surveillance will not decrease or abruptly stop violence and/or crime. Furthermore, Wang claims

that the Chinese government is trying to, “enable facial recognition through upgraded cameras”

(Wang). Chinese government is trying way too hard to stop crime by spending unnecessary

money on surveillance. Mass surveillance has shown no real outcome and that should be a big

sign. In the end, pervasive surveillance and censorship is way too costly and it shouldn’t be too

invested on considering how ineffective it is.

As a final point, government surveillance and censorship is ineffective by it not

significantly stopping crime and or violence. It also invades privacy in the way that innocent

people are being watched constantly and daily for no real reason. To add on to that, it costs too

much to spy on people considering that it doesn’t really help at all.