Blog Post #1 - Richard Bisso

Richard Bisso

English 346

Professor Simon

Blog Post #1

Digital Surveillance of the 21^st Century

            With all the talk that’s been going on in terms of surveillance, I couldn’t help but feel intrigued to talk about it. Ever since the Snowden relations of June of 2013, its definitely been one of the hot topics that has become ever more increasingly important with the passing of time. Prior to the revelations, it’s extremely interesting to contrast tech companies before such exposure. Before 2013, there was hardly ever a mention of privacy, or even information for that matter; it was merely assumed that the companies you gave you information to were to automatically be trusted, but since the exposure of governments and their ties with the ISP holders as well as tech companies, it comes as no surprise the ever pervasive scrutiny from the general public and media.

            I couldn’t help but find the irony as of lately with regards to Google. When using their services now, every now and then they offer privacy tips in helping safeguard your data. But a quick look back to the PowerPoint slide that Greenwald had referred to in his novel No Place To Hide, shows that Google was complicit in handing over their information to the NSA Prism Data Collection beginning January of 2009. The stark contrast of their supposed support for privacy is nothing more than laughable—in my view. Google, which is used by millions of individuals on a daily basis, leads to a very interesting position. Once the centralized spot of information, at the drop of a court order, is now the most pervasive and ubiquitous spy tool in all of existence. The level of information that such a company has is absolutely staggering. And the notion that such a company has its users interest at heart is nothing more than a false sense of trust—one in which no citizen should ever take with complacency, as proven by the PRISM Data Collection program.

            The mere fact that companies such as Google even attempt to allude to any inch of privacy is nothing more than fodder, and illustrates exactly why people should never trust such companies. Time and time again, whether it be from science fiction writers of the 50’s like Huxley and Orwell, or modern day experiences, centralization of information is begging to be misused by those in power, and for those that think otherwise, PRISM along with many of the Snowden revelations reveal the prevalent intentions, regardless of whether or not that was the case or goal for that company.           Collection at such a vast scale has proven to be inefficient at capturing terrorists, which begs the question. What is the true purpose and intention of these collection programs? Although not explicit, I don’t think it takes much to see the true nature of gathering everyone’s personal data…the real issue has never been about terrorists, as many so called “experts” propped up by the media would have you believe. But there is something far graver that the citizenry is allowing—a violation of rights under the guise of social networking and trust. A surveillance system that knows no bounds, and is infinite and in tools and resources designed to keep such measures in place and ever expanding.