INTERNET SURVEILLANCE CONTINUE: MODERN SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM AND DISCIPLINARY POWER November 13, 2013 · by groupmetis · in Uncategorized ·Edit Written by Xiaochuan Wang (5280736) The very early attempts in modern period of massive surveillance partly derive from WWI and WWII, when large surveillance programs were developed for intercepting valuable informations from opposite parties. In especially after WWII, as the development of telecommunication and wide spread use of personal electronic device, it is first time in modern history that a country was able to establish a sophisticated network for systematically collecting personal informations. Not until recent decades, massive surveillance program seems only organized by those ‘non-liberal’ countries such as Soviet Union or East Germany. Where their domestic secret police developed massive surveillance programs in intercepting telephone signals to find out the potential defectors and possible spy from the West. Stasi, the Ministry for State Security is the political institution that take charge behind the scene in East Germany. In its forty years’ ruling in Germany, Stasi was able to collect huge amount of personal informations through its complex network of surveillance. Modern society seems witness the worst type of totalitarian panopticon society, and thank heaven such future seems ended as the fall of Soviet Union in 1990s. However, in recent decades, things does not changed with the accordance of general publics’ good will. Western society was actually also being watched by their own national security institutions. For instance, long since the Internet was first developed in US, American government has developed new mechanism in tracking possible data flow on the network. In especially after 911, American politicians advocate further exploitation of intelligence through Networks around the World. In especially regarding America’s special position in the on-going ‘War on Terror’; America has been actively developed various new surveillance program under first Push administration, and later Obama administration. Although average US citizen’s privacy information was protected from government access based on US constitution, American policy makers was able to utilizing the systematic flaws within the American law to make surveillance program that does not actually directly violated Us law while they can effectively getting informations though telephone and Emails. In especially since the commercialization of the Internet in 2000s, as the massive increasing Internet users World Wide, intelligence agencies around the World seems found out another unexploited Gold Mine of information. And this Gold Mine is continue to grow as the transformation took place in the Web 2.0 services since 2010s. While billions of people starting to uploading their pictures, chats, and personal informations to those gigantic data collectors (Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and so on). It actually make the whole process of getting personal information and simply watching any individual so much easier. Not only informations can be tracked, analyze and predicted, so does the individual behaviors, values, ideas and their motivation were reveals through a huge chuck of data analysis. The technological breakthrough not only allow us to make unimaginable contact with a wider World today but also make us highly vulnerable being ‘watched’ by various institutions, to make matter even worse, a lot of times they know us better than ourselves as they analyze what they saw, not only recording, and when they are able to watch and track our internet using datas; the can build up our behavior, and eventually predict our actions and even providing possible interventions. In recent years, several leaking events seems finally wake the public awareness of the massive surveillance issue; especially after 2005, several whistle blowers has reveal very little parts of the existence of various surveillance programs in Western Democratic countries as the respond towards different attacks from terrorism cells. Several of them caught wide media attention: and what they has been revealed was impressive. Taking one very recent example, former NSA contracter Edward Snowden’s leaked information about NSA’s surveillance program ‘PRISM’ reveals how individuals could actually be watched in their virtual life. As part of the surveillance program developed since Bush administration, PRISM is a surveillance program that mainly focused on collecting information through major Social Network Service provide. PRISM collect informations through their sub-contractors directly from companies such as Hotmail, Skype, Gmail and Facebook. NSA has the power to request access on any account of those technological companies. In specially according what Edward Snowden’s account, even a personal like him could view any individuals Facebook or other account directly through their working program. The reveal of this surveillance program seems telling us an obvious message: we are clearly being watched, our past deeds on Internet was recorded, our behavior of the current has been analyzed, our possible future acts has been predicted. We are actually under gravely gaze by the state machine just like we are being watched in a panopticonized prison. However this time, we are being watched closely by the Big Brother while we are granted with materialistic lifestyle thus we will be satisfied like animals in the new farm.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:18:04 +0000
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