Does More Privacy Lead to Less Freedom?

So much of what we do on the internet has to do with interaction. Thanks to web 2.0 the internet allows for interaction from one user to another, the amount of people who can talk, send photos and sharing information with the world, is innumerable. Many of the popular websites used by internet users are sites such as Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and many other social networking sites. These sites allow users to connect with others who can be in any undisclosed location. So many users go online because they feel a sense of community online. However, Miller argues that although this may feel like the new definition of the word community it is not. This chapter details how he still believes that all the technological advances throughout the years that communities are still based on physical location and face-to-face interactions. Miller does not quite say if virtual communities are a positive or negative thing, this depends on how people use those communities. He gives a good example of the forum he belonged to called The Big Chill. This was a forum for a surfing community in the UK. He was an active member he checked the site daily, he contributed and even used it to meet up with some other members and surf. But once he and the other forum members got busy or didn’t have time to be online on the forum, the forum was not as active and eventually was taken off the internet. Miller argues that this can be because the forum was not based off a physical location there was no home base to the forum. There was no location to keep the forum up and running. Forums like The Big Chill are seen more as a resource then a community, because the members of the forum simply was used to it to get tips, talk and sell used equipment. “The Big Chill was a ‘failed’ community: one that just didn’t capture a communal sentiment and thus eventually died out.”(194)

Next Miller moves on to describe the proper way of talking about digital communities and describes them as networks. “The network has replaced the group as the basic socio-economic unit of contemporary society.” (197) The changes in the economy were based on customization, consumption, and the development of worldwide communication infrastructure. The main difference pointed out between communities and networks is that, “Networks (social networks, economic networks or otherwise) have a goal, point, project or purpose for their existence. They exist for a specific purpose and therefore can be seen as the products of instrumental reasoning. This puts them in contrast with place-centered communities which exist merely be the fact of location.” (199)

As many mostly all citizens who have access to a computer participate in some sort of social network site or have online profiles, this leads to the collection of data on us. The things we put online about ourselves can seen by millions of people, some of those being private companies who data mine for our information so that they can collect this information and sell it to advertisers. The government also watched what we do online, they claim to be protecting our country from another terrorist attack. Privacy on the internet today is not possible, we as Americans love free things, and all these websites that want to collect data on us allow us to use their sites for free. We have virtually traded our privacy for a free way to stay connected with people online. The only issue is that most people do not know that this is the main reason why websites allow us to use their profiles for free. Everything we do online is being tracked, recorded, and stored in data banks. We all have digital profiles made of ourselves. Every time we shop online, every time we looks up things to buy on Google that gets remembered and stored, all so that websites can offer us products we didn’t know we needed. Is this fair that private companies can take all this personal information from us just to sell our digital profiles to advertising companies? How can things that we do on our own time in the privacy of our houses become public information?

I think the bigger issue with digital surveillance is that after 9/11 the government started surveilling their own citizens internally. However, it took over ten years for American public to know that this was happening, thanks to Edward Snowden. Will this mass amount of surveillance lead to less terrorism? Or will we gain more freedom from surveillance? The answers are not clear but what is apparent is that slowly more and more surveillance takes place every day. First citizens are okay with being monitored by public street camera when they would down the street, next we are being monitored on the computer and all the Google searches we have done are being stored and recorded. Lastly, all of our phone calls are being listened in on. “In 2008 the government passed the foreign intelligence surveillance act which states that all internet communications going through the United States are now subject to government surveillance through various methods of wiretapping.” (117) This seems to be a serious loss of privacy, we can’t do anything on our computers without it being found out, now we can’t talk on our phones without the conversation being recorded. Although the protection of our country does need to be put in the forefront of our governmental tasks I don’t think taking away millions of citizens private abilities to communicate should be where to start when trying to protect us. There should be some way weeding out the people who have endless amount of pointless conversations and only shop for shoes online. Instead, the government should put more effort s into surveillance on those people who sound like potential threats to our country. If the government is so worried about every little thing that people are doing, they will be wasting their resources, efforts, and time. As we saw in the documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply, a comedian got his apartment raided because of a silly quote he put up as his Facebook status. If the government actually put their efforts into looking for real potential threats instead of angry comedians the surveillance that the government is doing would be more justified. It seems that as time goes on and threats terrorism become more common American’s privacy will be taken away even more and there is nothing we can do about it because the government has a law called State of Exception. “State of exception is a situation in which the governments in the interests of security were using extended power associated with the emergency legislation in order to operate beyond the law.” The more ISIS and other countries threat the USA, the more the government will find ways to enact surveillance on the mass society.