Right To Privacy

With so much terror being spread in the world today governments are beginning to closely monitor the internet usage of their citizens. The major question is: are governments overstepping and breaching the privacy of their citizens? Obviously, the laws in each country are different but the definition to one’s base privacy, as described by Donald M. Gillmor, who alone has written many different law textbooks used in many different universities, and other very respected professors came together to write the Mass Communication Law: Cases and Comments defined privacy as "individuals are entitled to protect personal, intimate aspects of their lives from use or interference by others." To give a valid argument it also needs to be stated how the government

As of now governments all around the world like the United States, England, and China, look at personal information and make sure no data has been breached that could harm them or their identity. Without this, the internet wouldn’t be a safe place; but with some government interventions major terrorist plots could have been stopped leading to a safer world. Ever since the 1990s and leading into September 11 terrorist attacks were becoming more and more frequent and the government and FBI had to figure out a way to prevent terrorist attacks. So, how do governments best protect its citizens while also protecting their right to privacy? Governments like the USA, China, and England should be able to have access to personal data that is only relevant to potential terrorist activities that are decided on by government officials, like mass shootings and public bombings, that might occur in the

The US’s governments goal is to protect all their citizens at all costs, because of this, data can be breached and used to make sure the user is safe. According to the 2010 National Security Strategy “cybersecurity threats represent one of the most serious national security, public safety, and economic challenges we face as a nation.” This is used to give the United States government the ability to not only look into potential terrorist plots but to also stop them before they ever happen. “The threats encompassed by our cybersecurity are created by three elements: (1) knowledge of a vulnerability, (2) access to it, and (3) a payload. (38) All cyber insecurities require some vulnerability--that is, a flaw or weakness”. (Finnmore and Duncan) The US has tried to limit these flaws or weaknesses online but has not been able to completely get rid of them because they allow their citizens to have more privacy and the problem won’t be stopped until they can access and assess all data from their citizens. If citizens had complete privacy the US government wouldn’t be able to stop anything before it happened, possibly making situations worse as leaders wouldn’t have any idea what was going to happen or when it would happen.