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Law in the Internet Society
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Public Surveillance: A Battle Between Privacy and Safety-- By ChengyuanZhou? - 29 Nov 2024A Serious TalkOn my way to school in an UBER car, I talked to the driver about the US ban on TikTok? . I said that although these social media have the risk of leaking privacy, we are just ordinary people and actually do not deserve the government's attention. Social media sacrifices some privacy but provides us with convenience. At this time, the driver told me seriously that Americans don't think so. An ordinary person may not be worthy of attention, but what if his child becomes a celebrity? The privacy between relatives is closely related, so everyone’s personal privacy should be respected absolutely. These words touched me deeply and made me think a lot. Cameras and social media are both important components of public surveillance. Perhaps we should discuss the potential impact of public surveillance on our personal lives from the perspective of individual rights rather than convenience.Public Surveillance and Public HealthCompared with the Western liberalism perspective, East Asia places more emphasis on the responsibilities that individuals should bear in society. Therefore, for the consideration of public safety, the invasion of personal privacy is, to some extent, an acceptable price which should be undertaken by citizens. However, this view is being questioned now, as more and more people have been aware of the importance of personal privacy. From the liberalism perspective, the owner of information should have full self-determination over his personal information. People should have the right to decide when, how and to what extent their information is disclosed to and acquired by others. This is also a valuable idea that I have learned during my legal studies in the United Studies. Privacy is a fundamental right that everyone is born with and is an important line of defense for individuals facing the expansion of police power. Without consent, personal privacy shall not be violated in any way or to any extent. The operation of police power always has the tendency of expansion, and in this process the limit and scope of the original power may be ignored, thus leading to the violation of civil rights. Public surveillance by itself cannot constitute a serious violation of civil rights, the problem is that when it is combined with other government regulatory means, the potential harm is incalculable. For example, if you belong to a group of people concerned by the government, it can know where you appear and track your movements, if you are detected by the facial recognition system of the cameras. Also, many agencies that work with the government will illegally sell your personal information to third parties after obtaining it. Although the government usually claims that people's personal privacy will be respected, you would never know how much of your privacy information has been collected by the government. Your blogs, your chats with other people, the websites you visit, all such information could be easily acquired by the government without your knowledge. You are no longer the master of your own information, and therefore have no true freedom.Resist or RegulateA strong argument supporting public surveillance is that it can prevent crimes and catch criminals effectively. However, this argument does not hold water. While surveillance cameras do help law enforcement catch criminals, the government doesn't have enough people to identify and track criminals among tens of thousands of cameras. Moreover, the cameras don't seem to help prevent crime. Many criminals are not afraid of cameras at all by simply wearing masks or making crimes in the middle of the night. Cameras along are not enough to deter crimes. Only when the surveillance information is combined with other location information, such as GPS information and third-party software travel information, can the government identify criminals and locate them more accurately. In Baltimore, the Police Department implemented the Baltimore Aerial Investigation Research (AIR) program to track movements linked to serious crimes. It combines aerial surveillance technologies, traditional ground surveillance, and human analysts. This practice, while efficient, is a serious violation of citizens' privacy. It's just a surveillance program under the sun. In unknown corners, vast surveillance systems are used to track phone records, Internet activity and the travel routes of citizens, many of which are just spying on people under the guise of promoting public health. Public surveillance needs to be resisted. However, with the continuous development of surveillance technology and the need for governments to deter crimes, this trend is becoming irreversible. The government has introduced a large number of laws to regulate surveillance, to show that their surveillance is reasonable and proportionate to the potential crime threat, but this is not enough. The moment citizens are captured by surveillance cameras, they are no longer the owners of their personal information. The law can only allow citizens to obtain compensation after their privacy rights have been violated, and the regulations can only reveal the way the monitoring systems work on paper. The tension between public and private interests leads to the inevitable conflict between the installation and use of public surveillance systems and the right of privacy belonging to citizens.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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