The Future of the Surveillance Society

The past and present state of surveillance technology has been a fascinating topic to cover and debate. Now that we are entering the final week of this class (SOCI 149), I would like to analyze the future of the United States growing surveillance society. Like I have countlessly mentioned, 9/11 seriously altered our national beliefs and policies. Once a nation proudly living by our constitutional rights, the United States impulsively moved their reliance to "Big Brother". Only a month after the attack, the United States government had decided that national security now eclipsed the importance of civil liberties. On October 26th, 2001, former President Bush passed the Patriot Act, which reduced restrictions on law enforcement's and made it ridiculously easy for them to do their job without the burden of maintaining personal privacy. The controversial law was suppose to expire at the end of 2009, but President Barrack Obama surprisingly called to extend all three provisions of the law for another year. The fact that the now majority-run democratic Congress decided to extend the law was unexpected because most democrats were adamantly against it when Bush first implemented the act. Even Obama, back in May when running for president said, it was a "shoddy piece of legislature"...that most be changed to "track and take out the terrorist without undermining our constitution and freedom". Many believe that now that the democrats are in power and hold the responsibility for the act, they have no choice but to uphold it (it was easy to contradict it when Republicans were doing it). In Obama's defense, he did make some reforms to provide additional privacy protection but they were very minor because the government refused to reduce the effectiveness of the provisions. The government can still give law enforcements access to business records, jurisdiction to wiretap many suspecting phone lines, and the ability to "conduct surveillance on suspects with no known link to foreign governments or terrorist groups" (lone wolf provision); therefore, completely ignoring the the 4th amendment's importance of "probable cause". So we are certain of one thing for our future: The Patriot Act will sill be around for at least another year to justify our forgotten constitutional rights of privacy. Our system of checks and balances are in danger; some believe that we are now following a new political order. "We have moved from a state of emergency into a permanent state of exception with no end in sight". We cant keep acting on suspicion, we must fight for our privacy rights unless we want to create a government with too much authority and a society with fewer and fewer rights.