The personal privacy of citizens should be protected from government intrusion

The personal privacy of citizens should be protected from government intrusion

Imagine a world where Big Brother is always watching us under a microscope. This is the world we live in today where the government is trying to protect its citizens through controversial means. In a democratic society, citizens take freedom of speech and expression for granted, but are we truly free? This question runs through everyone’s minds all the time in the drastically changing world today. The government has the right to intrude personal privacy in specific circumstances and at other times intrusion is not acceptable.

Firstly, consider the situations in which the government does not have the right to intrude on personal privacy. For example, a government official can not randomly go on a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook and take images of a person and fabricate them to be explicit or linked to crime. Another example, is a court issued. The government, when intruding on personal privacy, cannot go above and beyond what is necessary to protect citizens. For instance, when police receive a warrant to only search a person's car for a weapon, they can’t go and search their home unless, permission is granted  from a court to do so. Certain special interest groups and citizens think that the Department of Homeland Security’s new policy of full body scanners and pat-downs cross the line as far as intruding on personal privacy. The government argues that these actions are necessary to protecting fliers from terrorist attacks; some people maintain, however, that the scanners and body-pats go too far.

On the other hand, the government can intrude on personal privacy when an individual poses danger to the rest of society. For example, in many states from Maine to Florida the issue of sex offenders and sexual abuse has been major. As a result, the state governments have issued a sex offender registry that publicly posts information of individuals that are convicted sex offenders. These sex offenders have been restricted access to the internet and other forms of communication because these are the routes they used to commit their crimes. Also, another issue in today’s ever changing world, is the increase in piracy. With the access to the information super highway of the internet anything is possible nowadays, specifically the ever growing issue of piracy. Piracy has been in our society since ancient times in terms of looting jewelry off ships but nowadays people’s privacy are in danger in two ways. Firstly, people’s personal information is at stake because many choose to everyday tasks such as banking and shopping online. If someone, hacks into a website and steals personal and financial information online from an online Citibank server then personal privacy has been breached. Another form of breaching privacy is taking confidential information of someone and posting on the net, which can harm the person in getting a job or even get arrested for something they never did. Therefore the government has the right to intrude on privacy in the previous scenario to prevent illegal financial scams or identity theft online. Lastly, the privacy of citizens should be broken when copyright laws are broken. With many downloading and uploading sites it has become easy for “downloading” multimedia from sites. This is basically robbing the product from the owner and not giving credit for their work. Therefore, the government has the right to intrude on personal privacy to prevent illegal activity.

All in all, the government’s sole responsibility is to respect personal privacy but depending on circumstances it may have to intrude. When people are harming society (eg. Computer hacking) and put their fellow citizens at risk then the government has the right to intrude. On the other hand, if a person is living lawfully then the government should allow the person to have freedom of expression.