Government Surveillance Report

In a post 9/11 culture, the measure of national security often outweighs individual value of the american electorate. As justification to preemptively identify terrorist activity, surveillance has increased and proliferated, questioning the narrative of it as a passive actor. Consequently, freedoms are tested in the public eye, encouraging discussion about current surveillant uses of technology and its relationship with democracy. Surveillance, while encroaching on democratic principals, also provides empowering opportunities for individuals to contend the implemented practices. This back and forth between the elected and the electorate enables a meaningful opposition to misguided limitations of personal liberties. Although, such actions of
Although the policy of strategic incapacitation says different, in practice it seems that policing is favored above the right to free speech. As there is no longer an opportunity for negotiation in the modern regime, police now are the only group to discern where, when and how a protest may take place, and the protesters must thoroughly comply or loose their right to protest altogether (Gillham, 87). Furthermore, in the name of preparing for such events, surveillance is implemented to collect information of the protesting groups. For example, infiltrating and monitoring group activity through meetings and their use of internet communications is common practice. Perhaps more notably within strategic incapacitation tactics, however, is the utilization of CCTV or police videographers to monitor the protests as they occur (Gillam, 90). In operation, this exploits evidence of possible criminality or unfavorable images among the protesting crowd, producing information about the protesters that could be recalled should the group organize in the future. The strategies mentioned above operate under restrictive efforts and secret surveillance, and are entirely contingent on selective police reasonings. Citizens are in fear of repression and retribution at the hand of their
Considering this, journalists often are informational mediums between the government activity and the public reception, and for this reason are unsurprisingly targets of surveillance as well. This case is no truer than in Laura Poitras’s experience, even before her contact with Snowden and the controversial NSA documents. Possibly due to allegations of foreknowledge on an attack she filmed in a war zone, Potrais was placed on a government watch-list (Maas, 2-3) . Her travel plans from then on were filtered through constant violations against her individual and professional rights to privacy and due process. For example, government officials repeatedly greeted Poitras with weapons, seized her personal and professional technologies, forced her withstand detentions, interrogations, and even failed to disclose their interest even after her submissions of Freedom of Information Act requests (Maas, 3). More than that, Poitras felt compelled to implement encryptions to her data, assuming rightfully so that this malpractice included monitoring her internet activity. The government’s apparent cancellation of Poitras’s right to fair treatment through legal channels as a US citizen displays a level of unjust surveillance practices, and one that questioned her agency as a