Sunday, 11 August 2013

Surveillance on the social media

Surveillance plays a major role for humankind though out history, from keeping prisoners in cheek and out of the way of the public to policing trouble areas with polices but now day’s surveillance is everywhere and it’s not stopping. Surveillance for public safety is importance, but surveillance and also be used to keep the public in cheek, CCTV now day capture all acts in major cities and surrounding area. The newest form of surveillance that is generally accepted it on the social media sites such as Face book. Facebook allows virtually an unlimited amount of personal data to be placed on the site.(Baruh, 2010) The reason it is generally accepted because it in the terms and condition and generally no one’s will read all of the fine print.
pitcure by Travis Nep Smith

The data that is collected by these social networks and companies that advertise on them can be quite sensitive to the person and it has been normalize to share any and all information about one’s self. One can give age, gender, sexual preference, likes and dislikes and how they feel, openly and freely to anyone in the world that knows where to look. Once surveillance was a physical thing having to wait in dark alleys to follow someone. Now a person can just sit at a computer and get regular updates on what the person is doing, how they feel and where they are. gone are the days of fear of Big Brother and cameras from George Orwell book 1984, today where there could be no cameras in the world and yet someone could be spied on and have more information disclosed to a third party. today world is worse than 1984 because people don't fear the cameras or the social media and don't hold their tongues, if a government got hold of such information a whole country could be watch with ease.

Surveillance does not just happen on social media but within government agencies such as NSA. The NSA's dragnet of emails, phone calls, web searches and affiliated metadata occurs under the legal authority of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, or FAA (The Guardian, 2013). this Act was deign to track spies and terrorist but have been found to also collect average American details, the NSA claims to purge the detail that is not seen as a threat unless it. Also according to a loophole in the act the NSA can search email and phone records without a warrant to the average US citizen. America land of the free, just about as much freedom as London in Gorge Orwell’s book, 1984.


Baruh, L and Soysal, L 2010, ‘Public intimacy and the new faceg (book) of surveillance: the role of social media in shaping contemporary dataveillance’, in Dumova, T and Fiordo, R (eds.), Handbook of Research on Social Interaction Technologies and Collaboration Software: Concepts and Trends

The Gurdian,

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls, 10/8/13, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/nsa-loophole-warrantless-searches-email-calls 


the gurdian, 

NSA surveillance: the long fight to close backdoor into US communications, 10/8/13, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/senator-ron-wyden-mark-udall-nsa

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