Blog # 9

Fatema Tuz Zohora

ENG 101 – 0768

Dr. Vasileiou

Essay 03 draft

Date: 12.03.2012

Violation of Privacy in the Name of Security

Our society provides us with certain freedom and protects us from crime and threats like terrorism. Sometimes in the name of protection, however, the society infringes upon our privacy. If in the future our society finds a way to punish criminals before the crime is committed, human privacy will be desecrated and our freedom will be taken away. Especially if someone changes his mind not to commit the crime in the end, punishing them will be an injustice. In the movie Minority Report, we have seen chief officer John Anderton ready to do anything to ensure safety of the people. However when he found himself as a murderer in a future crime, then he realized that the justice system he was working  under was in fact flawed because it violated people’s privacy and did not take free will into consideration. Therefore if our society finds a way to eliminate or drastically reduce crime, terrorism and other threats, we shouldn’t do so regardless of ethical consideration of the means we will use.

If our society finds a solution to protect people and reduce crime before it happens, it will violate the privacy of innocent people and we shouldn’t let this happen. In the movie Minority Report, John Anderton protects the society by arresting the criminals by using pre-cog system before the crime is committed. However since every person has free will and therefore it’s impossible to know beforehand whether a person will go through with committing the crime, the pre-cog’s prediction was not the absolute truth. When John realized that the pre-cog system did not take free will into consideration, Lammer did not want people to know about that because then the system will lose its credibility. To protect his turf, Lammer used John’s private data to set him up for Leo’s murder. In the end, however, John did not commit the murder because he chose not to. Had it not because of John’s strong determinism to prove himself innocent, he would have been framed and punished for the murder. Thus even if society finds a way to predict crimes in the making, we should not allow any action to be taken because people’s privacy will be violated and innocent people may be punished.

Sometimes excessive security measures violate people’s privacy. At our airports, the security checking is tighter than ever. Now days, passengers are asked to show their ids multiple times and asked to go through a full body scanner. If the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) suspects a passenger, he must go through uncomfortable questioning and rigorous checking of his personal belongings. People feel that such extreme measures are violation of privacy as majority of the air travelers are innocent. In a different kind of scenario, police in the United States can enter a suspect’s house unannounced with a search warrant whether or not the person has committed the crime. This legal loophole causes trouble for innocent people as they did not do any wrong.  Thus security is necessary but violating people’s privacy in the name of security is not acceptable.

The term “Stop and frisk” is a strategy for police officers to reduce crime by searching people they suspect which seriously violates innocent people’s privacy. According to an article in The New York Times by Robert Stolarik, the overwhelming majority of the stops do not result in the discovery of any wrongdoing on the part of the person stooped (Stolarik, 2012). By using stop and frisk, police unfairly targets, stops and arrests African-American and Hispanic young men for trespassing. In some cases police stops women which intimidates and embarrasses them. In one instance cited in, a 17-year-old boy who lives in the Bronx described being stopped by the police and questioned after returning from buying ketchup for dinner. His mother, Jaenean Ligon, was asked by officers to go to the lobby to identify her son, who she initially feared was dead or hurt (Baker and Gardiner, 2012). Police argues that this type of method was useful to reduce crime sharply in that neighborhood. While reducing crime is important, the police must not forget the importance of respecting people’s human rights. In the case of the mother and the son, the mother’s fear for her son’s life was unfortunate and unwarranted.

In the article Police Pursuits, the author Robert E. Moore discussed the police’s extreme pursuits of criminals which caused tremendous harassment and loss of innocent life in some cases. When criminal tries to get away with a stolen car, the police usually pursue him using advanced technology. However no matter how advanced the technology is, the car chasing occurs on the road which is shared by not only the police and criminal but also by other drivers and pedestrians. In the moment of a car chase, speed limits are violated and lane changing safety measures are ignored. When a collision occurs, it usually involves a few passenger cars who were not related to the crime by any means. In worse cases, pedestrians are killed as a result of the chase. These types of events sometimes kill or injure the innocent people. In 1980’s a police officer who is now retried chased a stolen car at high speed, crashed with a third car; the driver of that car was killed and a passenger was seriously injured (Moore, 1990). Thus an innocent person lost his life and another suffered irreversible damage because of a police officer’s reckless driving in the name of safety.

           

In conclusion, it is never justified to take away privacy for security. If the government uses high technology such as GPS tracking, or wire tapping to prevent future crime, it gains more power over people and people lose their basic human rights of privacy. When people’s privacy is compromised, they are vulnerable to various injustices such as punishment for crime they have not committed or unwarranted harassment.  Thus extra security is not worth it when privacy and freedom is lost.