The Internet Is A Surveillance State Summary

You are under surveillance, no, not by the FBI, at least not hopefully. Large companies such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Is this a bad thing? Bruce Schneier seems to think so in this Article titled The Internet is a Surveillance State. In this article, Schneier believes that this big data will make all our deepest darkest secrets known to the world. However, it really is not the end of the world. For this article, it has some strong points such as its intro, showing that even the smartest internet users can still be caught. Schneier also goes on to state that this is the end, we’re done. Though he does have a point, the way he goes about saying this doesn’t work to be an argumentative essay.
What Schneier did best was choosing a topic that everyone can relate to. In America, it is hard to function in day to day life without technology. That being said, nearly everyone uses internet of a consistent basis. So, anyone reading this will in some way
understand and relate to the topic of online surveillance.
As for actual in-text information that works to inform the reader and keep it interesting, I would say the intro is a very grabbing example.
What the author does is he lists three people, all of whom practice the highest level of internet security. They are fugitives hiding from the cyber police. The point I assume he is trying to make is that even if you practice this extreme level of anonymity, you can, and will, still be tracked. So, as a normal user of the internet, if I wanted to stay anonymous, there are ways to circumvent it, but in the end, there is no way of being unseen. This is worrying to a point, and it is why this essay is intriguing to me because I feel like there should be an easier way to stay under the radar.
Another thing that I would say makes the article better would be the structure. Schneier gives a topic paragraph about how the internet is a surveillance state then gives a very easy to understand example, which relates to the reader. It makes the whole essay very easy to understand and
informative.
As for what I dislike, the conclusion does a very poor job at giving examples on how we can fix the internet or some solutions that could be dabbled in. What Schneier resorts to is ‘the world's going to end’ type explanation. He calls the government punch-drunk, and goes on to insult the readers saying that Google knows more about your spouse than you do. His last sentence does make a good point, but it is overshadowed, quite literally, by the previous couple paragraphs.
There are also many other things I could argue. Those including, is big data bad for a person? Is this information used in a bad way? For a normal person, is their data even being looked at by another human, or just used in ad algorithms? Schneier thinks this is the end of the world, whereas it hardly affects our day to day lives, in a sense that we aren’t negatively influenced by it.
Overall, Schneier makes many good points and it is a well-rounded article giving many good points, and supports those with examples. I do agree with him that the internet is being surveilled, but it is not the end, nor is it that bad. The essay is good, but loses its argument with the unprofessional, doom-mongering last few paragraphs.