Government Surveillance: Protection vs. Privacy Essay Example

According to NATO, North American Treaty Organization, the three duties of a government are, to Protect, Preserve, and Provide for the nation that it governs. However it is not all so simple, in order to protect the country, it has to be on guard, watching for threats and dealing with them accordingly. In my reading of the following texts my ideas concerning governments using their power to fulfill their duty to protect while also maintaining the privacy of the people. Waiting for the Barbarians, written by J.M. Coetzee, focuses on a nameless empire, which at the furthest reaches of its borders has the seemingly benign threat of barbarian attack. Following that is “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka, looks at a penal society which has recently undergone change in authority where the new commandant doesn’t share the same values as the old commandant when it comes to the judicial system of the colony. Switching from using power to surveillance, “Panopticism” by Michel Foucault, who takes the classic design of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and exploits all of its useful characteristics ranging from schools and hospitals, to factories and prisons. In a modern look at Betntham’s panopticon, “Visible Man” by Peter Singer looks at the panopticon and at modern data gathering technologies in order to discuss how more data can save lives, but impedes on the privacy that people expect nowadays. In an article “The effect of the USA Patriot Act on Workplace Privacy”, by Clare Sproule looks at the privacy in the post 9/11 workplace where she discuss’ how the Patriot Act allows for more surveillance and how the surveillance is taking place. These five texts show the struggles between government’s use of power to protect its citizens through the elimination and surveillance of viable threats. Throughout history we can see all different types of governments and what they did for their countries. They all had different ways of doing the same things. In Waiting for the Barbarians,