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How far can government surveillance affect our daily lives? How effective is mass surveillance in preventing terrorists or future security threats? Or does it simply open doors for more cyber attacks? In this blog, I will be comparing experts’ opinion on effectiveness of government surveillance.

Executive Director Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization, cautions against the dangers of mass surveillance and argues for a strong system that would enable other non-governmental organizations and global policy to ensure freedom in the digital age. Specifically responding to the Apple versus FBI case, Cindy asserts that “these heinous attacks must not be used to justify further erosion of our security, civil liberties or privacy.” There is no confirmation that mass surveillance and cyber encryption has been and will prevent further terrorists attacks. She also notes the danger of encryption being used for repressive and illegal purposes. She not only fears the cyber criminals taking advantage of leaking information but also other authoritarian regimes. She says“there is no magic key that only good guys can use and bad guys cannot.”

Another opinion is that government surveillance is necessary evil. Some would argue that increased surveillance leads to less privacy but to more security. Manuel Gomes Samuel, a diplomat and specialist in data analytics and business forecasts, argues that surveillance is one of the main weapons to counter the tactics of armed suicide commands and bombing attacks. He is a firm believer in effectiveness of surveillance, because “predictive analytics captures relationships between explanatory (or independent) variables and the predicted variables from past occurrences to build data patterns in order to predict unknown outcomes.” He further acclaims for the prospects of automated security monitoring to preclude elusive threats that often blow with utmost violence in the most unexpected manner, time and place.

I think that the danger in government surveillance and ideological implication can have enormous negative consequences in the society. But we should also bear in mind that surveillance tools and technology can be extremely useful in preemptive actions towards all kinds of threats.

https://icrunchdatanews.com/how-to-fight-terrorism-video-surveillance-predictive-analytics/

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/2016/02/18/nsa-encryption-paris-attacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/opinion/mass-surveillance-isnt-the-answer-to-fighting-terrorism.html

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/35-international-experts-weigh-mass-surveillance-snowden-anniversary


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