Security surveillance

In the recent years the extent to which government surveillance can be accepted has become a contentious issue among the wider public all around the globe. Under the current disorder of criminal activities, many governments around the world have introduced surveillance on their citizens by means of monitoring people’s behavior through the use of CCTV cameras, postal interception, interception of internet traffic and phone calls. Governments around the world contend that the powers of their intelligence agencies needs to be more beefed up in order to adequately protect their populations from new global threats like “terrorism”. 

On the other hand ordinary citizens and several non-governmental organisations argue that mass surveillance is a breach of many fundamental rights of an individual and society as a whole. In this brief i will aim to provide theoretical supported arguments stating that mass government surveillance is in fact not needed to combat new phenomena crimes such as terrorism and cyber-crime.

Many scholars argue that government surveillance surely violates privacy. Privacy is a fundamental right that each individual is entitled to as enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This right is also recognized under the International Convent of Civil Rights as very decisive and maintains that every individual has the right to privacy. The right to privacy enables and awards human dignity that is of essence in a world where every individual lives their own lives on individual basis.

Solove (2011) observes that when the government is carrying out surveillance that is unwarranted on its citizens, then their civil right is breached. It is against the civil right for any country to practice surveillance, or any interception in its citizen’s privacy without a warrant from relevant institutions like the judiciary (Monahan, 2006).   

Whitaker (1999) observes that almost every country in the planet recognizes the right to privacy, where it is well expressed in their constitutions that govern their borders. Legal and constitutional conditions of the right to privacy are well explained, but various governments have overlooked these provisions and sort to do surveillance in the ignorance of this right.

In his study, Raul (2002) found out that the national security agency of the United States has been accused by people for overstepping their mandate in surveillance. They are accused of using GPS tracking to track people’s communication and their exact location without sanction or endorsements from relevant authorities.

In addition, it is arguable that government surveillance breaches the sovereignty of other states. Monahan (2006) observes that under the United Nations international laws on sovereignty, no other nation has the right to practice political authority over another state. It is, therefore, an intrusion of other countries sovereignty to intercept their data information, or to carry out any work of espionage under any sort of surveillance.

According to Mills and Oxford University Press (2008), this has been cited as abuse of domestic surveillance especially, with the introduction of drones in surveillance. The unmanned aerial vehicles better known as drones has put sovereignty on the front-line where drones are sent to spy on foreign lands without express permission from the local government.

As we are all aware that the United States have so many military basis scattered all over the globe, deploying their soldiers and assigning them to many missions. However, there have been cases of accusations where drones sent from the US military base in international missions have crossed other countries air space thereby violating their sovereignty (Wagner, 1999).

Yenne (2004) found out that America is not alone in this list of blame, but also there are other nations which include Israel and Britain, and other major nations. Israel has been blamed on spying on Syria and Lebanon, a violation of their sovereignty. Israeli drones have been reported to have been seen hovering in the airspace of Lebanon on surveillance missions. Afghanistan and Pakistan have also been complaining on international platforms following Britain’s drones spying on their land (Foley, 2006).

There are numerous examples that show that governments around the world are increasing spying on their own citizens and other states. One such example is the new legislation passed in New Zealand giving the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) more spying powers. The introduction of the bill provided the GCSB with more powers to spy on private lives of its citizens without going against the law. This bill has been opposed by various professionals citing that there is no alarm that should cause the government feel threatened as to introduce this bill (Tech Liberty New Zealand, 2013).

According to Tech Liberty New Zealand (2013), GCSB was given the mandate by this new bill to spy on private communications, where Gavin Miller a law scholar reiterates that is an attempt by the government to erode the right of privacy that the inhabitants of New Zealand should enjoy. He observes that there is no proper justification for the agency to be awarded such powers. The New Zealand Prime Minister stated this bill was essential to provide adequate protection to New Zealanders as there have been New Zealand citizens who were trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen (Trevett, 2013).

Wikileaks is also another example that highlights the extent of government spying. It is a media organization that publishes in the internet secret information from various governments and organizations. The organization was founded by Julian Asange, an internet activist from Australia. Their website has released quite a number of classified information that has hit headlines around the world (Salad, 2013). Their main goal is to bring world information to the knowledge of the people in a truthful manner, without hiding anything from them. Their website reiterates that their goal is to present the original truth of information without hiding important revelations.

The wider public must be aware that objectively when any form of unwarranted surveillance is carried out, it automatically violates the privacy of any individual. Furthermore it is confirmed that government surveillance is a breach of civil and human rights as well as the notion of a state’s sovereignty. This brief has also discussed examples of government spying such as the GCSB and the revelations in Wiki leaks.