Where is the fine line between national security and privacy? How to achieve it?

Man Fung Yuen 3035240855

The purpose of surveillance and monitoring done by government officials is often justified by national security and preventing terrorist attack. True that there may be information about terrorism flowing in the Internet, but a substantially larger portion of information on the internet is unrelated to the national security and is the private information of the citizens. Therefore the surveillance by government is also said to be an act infringing citizens’ liberty and freedom. But on the other hand, citizens would accept certain acts as necessary for ensuring their safety, such as x-ray checking their luggage or CCTV which monitor their act 24/7. However one distinction must be made is that these measures are all done in the public realm and the citizens’ private life is not infringed. This distinction is not observed in the digital world where the government would access all information flow and therefore seen as infringement of citizens’ liberty. In order for government to also observe the integrity of citizen’s privacy in the digital world, a distinction between private and public information must be made.

I agree that the government should be allowed to monitor the digital flow of information since there is an increasing portion of work done on the internet. The distinction between private and public information is difficult to draw in order to prevent violating citizen’s right, therefore I would suggest a limited level of access to information rather than filtering what information is allowed to be access and what is not. For example, one of the most controversial form of surveillance is the bugging of phone conversation. The US government is claimed to be eavesdropping on conversations of US citizens and this seriously infringed their rights since they do not when they would be monitored and sensitive contents may be leaked. Regarding this, the government may not have access to the actual conversation but rather they could monitor the detail of phone conversation such as the phone number of recipient and dialler so that they can spot suspiciously high frequency of conversation between some numbers or numbers which belong with identified anti government individuals. Then they can have further investigation into the individuals. This method could be less efficient since they cannot just pick up keywords in conversations and allow them to spot the terorrists, however there must be compromise so that national security on one hand and privacy on the other hand are both preserved. A government is always subordinate to its people and the rights of people are fundamental and not to be violated in a democratic society.