The US National Security: Personal Privacy Issue
Introduction
The problem of privacy and national security has recently become a sensitive social topic. On the one hand, the state traditionally performed the national security function because, historically, this was due to the need to maintain the military and law and order. On the other hand, protecting personal data is its owner’s prerogative. The amount and nature of information requiring protection are always individual. In this regard, one key question is whether domestic surveillance prevents enough threats to the United States to justify its aggressive vigilance against the American population.
The Essence of the Problem
The rapid development of information technologies, observed since the second half of the 20th century, by the beginning of the 21st century, has acquired such proportions that it has rightfully become known as the information revolution and has affected all aspects of public life, including personal privacy literally. However, as in the case of any genuinely revolutionary phenomenon, it is currently highly problematic to fully assess its impact, nature, and, even more so, the consequences. From this point of view, of particular interest is the experience of the United States of America as one of the first countries to enter the information age and, as a result, managed to accumulate a specific practice of regulating the information sphere in the new conditions (Jawaid 1). The problem of finding a balance between the guarantees of the confidentiality of personal information and the tasks of ensuring national security has become the focus of the attention of American researchers and politicians.
The Attitude of the State
Each subject of law independently determines what information is necessary to ensure confidentiality and, most importantly, by what means. Moreover, due to the dynamics of the development of information technologies in the modern world, the volume of private information is constantly increasing, and new ways of protecting it are required. At the same time, the state acts only as one of the subjects of maintaining security and is not directly responsible for the inviolability of the information of its citizens (Chesney and Citron, 2018). Thus, one can say that the state should not directly protect citizens’ information, but at the same time, this does not mean that the state is not interested in the security of its citizens’ data.
Non-Publicity of Data on Prevented Terrorist Acts
Along with expanding the competence of the special services, other legal measures were also developed that limited the public’s access to information about anti-terrorist activities. Thus, almost all legal norms that guaranteed judicial protection were abolished (Leong 111). Anti-terrorist record keeping was separated from criminal, which allowed law enforcement agencies and exceptional services to neglect many legal procedures. The proclaimed principle of preventive defense carried out anti-terrorist activities. Data inaccessibility in public sources can cause bewilderment, but it can be argued that it is necessary in this case. After all, in this way, terrorists will be able to look for ways to bypass surveillance methods.
Conclusion
Given the above data, it can be said that it is impossible to conclude the effectiveness of aggressive surveillance of citizens due to the secrecy of the surveillance schemes themselves. However, the absence of such major terrorist attacks as 9/11 may indicate that these systems are working. In addition, at the current time, there can be no question of complete confidentiality in the information space for everyone because the risks are too high. Of course, privacy is expensive, but the price of human lives, which can be affected, is much higher.
Works Cited
Jawaid, Tajdar. “Privacy vs national security.” International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, vol. 68, no. 7, 2020, pp. 1–7., Web.
Chesney, Robert, and Danielle Keats Citron. “Deep fakes: A looming challenge for privacy, democracy, and national security.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018, Web.
Leong, Brenda. “Facial recognition and the future of privacy: I always feel like … Somebody’s watching me.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 75, no. 3, 2019, pp. 109–115., Web.