Big Brother

Some news reports have suggested that the Bush administration used the USA Patriot Act to look at the e-mails of American citizens without a warrant. What’s your position if this was indeed the case? Should citizens be willing to give up their privacy? Does it bother you to know that your online communications are very potentially semi-private instead of private?


I've often heard the term "Big Brother" in reference to our government "keeping tabs" on our personal information, such as phone calls and now emails. If this is the case, and the government is looking at our information without warrants, then it encroaches on our 4th amendment right which is meant to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures, since the government would be looking at our information without a warrant. If they do get a warrant, I think web accounts, email history, and hard drives should be searched to help solve cases. Many also argue that the right to privacy should be or is implied in the 1st amendment freedoms. If this is the case, then the government would definitely be violating our right to privacy. 


I have mixed feelings on how much privacy citizens should be willing to give up and the potential semi-private nature of online communications. What if you are involved in a video game that involves killing people (since many of them do), and you are sending messages to a friend who also plays this game about the number of people you have killed. If you send a lot of these messages it will probably look suspicious to any government filters that are scanning your mail, you may be investigated, these harmless emails may be used against you some day, even though you were just talking about a game. This violation of privacy could do some harm. Personally I don't think I say things/too many things online that would be incriminating if taken out of context, so I'm not that bothered by the lack of privacy but more by the way this encroachment of privacy can escalate quickly (where will it stop?). 


Overall right now, I think the benefit outweighs my personal feelings that it isn't right to invade people's lives like that. A former teacher at my high school was arrested this summer because a parent found a Facebook message where the teacher made inappropriate innuendos towards a student. He had been violating students at different schools for decades and hadn't gotten caught, but all the evidence (incriminating emails and messages to students and uploaded/downloaded child porn) was on his computer and in cyberspace. If this information had been searched in filters looking for such key words, maybe he would have been caught sooner. I think many criminals could be caught if emails and downloaded files were monitored, so it may be worth it, I'm still debating.