Privacy; How much is too much?

 C'mon, you can admit it. You've had the conversation before. You know the one I'm talking about. 

"I won't let the government track me" cries the man, woman, or child who carries around an iPhone everyday. You stand there pondering whether or not to point out the obvious to the poor soul, but you decide to save yourself the own internal frustrations.

This is the conversation indicative of the state of the privacy wars in America; Illusion versus reality. For the average American, if you asked about the level of surveillance the government uses on its citizens, the answers you would receive are vastly different.  On one end of the spectrum, we have the blissfully ignorant segment of the population who will under estimate the amount they are being watched. On the other end of the spectrum, the extremists exist whos paranoia leads them to believe that every movement of every citizen is being monitored by one of the famed 3 lettered agencies that patrol our great nation. The scariest part for our nation is not this wide range of ideas, but rather the evidence it provides to prove that the level of surveillance we endure is an absolute mystery to the American citizen; and I believe this to be more concerning of an issue than the surveillance itself.

                                         

    Following the pandemic, risk has become a prominent theme in American politics. How much is too much? Under the lens of surveillance, it should be a consensus that not every American has the best interest of the nation in mind. Certainly, people can admit that there are bad actors and bad individuals who currently roam our borders; naturally, surveilling them to make sure they aren't engaging in dangerous behavior is important. The question then becomes; Is the privacy of the common, law abiding citizen worth the risk of the citizens who are deemed a threat to others?

    This question will lead to the core of the argument; protection of the state, weighed against the privacy of the individual. The oft used stance towards those who support the invasion of privacy suggests "those who have nothing to hide shouldn't be concerned with such practices." This idea is more or less Ad Hominem, as the answer to the debate on privacy should not be determined by outcome. Stopping a dangerous plot should not be the impotence to suggest more surveillance. This practice of cause and effect would simply lead to a cycle that consists of law abiding citizens being directly punished for the crimes of law-breakers. This practice would snowball into authoritarianism in no time whatsoever. 

So, what is the solution? What is the happy medium between state and citizen? These are the questions that will lead to the end of the privacy wars, so long as the conversation is built around reaching a compromise. The state needs to find a way to respect the individual rights, while the individual respects the right of the government to keep the population safe. So once more, I will pose the original question;

How much is too much? As always this is the case in politics, this is a conversation the American people must undergo; or else the American populace will bear the burden of their own indifference.

https://www.intoon.com/cartoons.cfm/id/117047

https://blog.internxt.com/cybersecurity-meme/

https://nationalpress.org/topic/data-privacy-roe-v-wade/