Texting, Government Monitoring, & Mr. Pickles.

How would you respond if you found out the government was reading your text messages? Especially since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, (coincidentally today is the 11th anniversary) national security has been on its toes, and for good reason. We heard about the phone tapping as an initiative of the National Security Agency and many were outraged by it. Such an infringement of privacy shouldn’t be allowed, should it?

In recent years, though, the rise of online communications and mobile phone abilities like texting and apps has posed a newer threat. Just as with phone tapping, governments across the world may be imposing a monitoring system of texts and web usage to search for key words relating to possible problems for national security.

Although such has no yet happened in the United States, private corporations may be
taking matters into their own hands. Even with relatively controlled instances like this, government intervention could increase. To get to the main question I’m supposed to be answering: Is it ever necessary to give up your civil rights to protect the greater good?

First of all, what really is the “greater good?” It’s vague but let’s just suppose that it means protecting society from whatever threat looms. I guess I would agree to some extent that screening electronic messages could be beneficial. But sometimes that power to sift through personal data gets taken to a new level. There is no need to store the information as the UK government has been doing. And clearly we know something is wrong with the way the government is going about this initiative when a group that opposes the procedures is called “Big Brother Watch.” Mr. Pickles, director of said group, has been a longtime outspoken critic of the government’s policies and loose regulations. It’s been said that these types of government actions violate the Fourth Amendment because they are done without a warrant, as well as comes close to infringing on the First Amendment of free speech.

So to sum up, in some cases a simple act of giving up these civil rights may be beneficial, though it completely depends on how the government utilizes or abuses the information they gain access to. As with the UK situation, I think the actions that they’re taking are going too far and violating civil rights beyond a reasonable level of simply screening messages. Personally, I side with Mr. Pickles on this one. Until more regulation is put in place, this “spying,” is causing more harm than good in framing the government as the enemy. I’d say it’s a good thing the Britons have the heroic Mr. Pickles on their side in advocating their privacies and civil rights.