The Advantages and Disadvantages of Mass Surveillance Essay Example

Its quite common for everyone that there are the word that called "Big Brother". It refers to the action when somebody in the government keeps monitoring on a person. By 1930 and 1940, government has more authority to access personal space (Barnes, 2021). Later in 1990, when an internet is being introduced, it has the most essential benefit that directly help people in term of communication (Barnes, 2021). However, as the telephone or mobile are being used globally it can also influence government to even take more access by monitoring personal life. This action is called "Mass surveillance". There are two main types of mass surveillance by government: Those are communication and video surveillance. Some people think that it is good as it can decrease crime or terrorism rates. On the other sides, they think that it is insecurity and it is against the personal privacy. Therefore, this essay will discuss the pros and cons of mass surveillance.

To begin with, mass surveillance by government provides many benefits that assist  country and society. First of all, it can diminish crime or terrorism rates in the cities. The circumstance from Boston Marathon race in 2013, there are 3 people who were killed and about 14 people were injured from the bomb (as cited in Barnes, 2021). Subsequently, the CCTV cameras that are installed in public area are able to identify the image of bomber, which will be cast to the official public area in order to catch that terrorist. However, while terrorism is the huge threat, but those people who have minor misbehaviour should be concern too. According to Reuters, the cameras that have been setting up help to reduce waste disposal and conflict rates in public areas (As cited in Barnes, 2021). This helps alot because it can make people life quality to improve. Secondly, it helps to manage the country. For example, in the China the facial recognation cameras that equipped with AI temperature detection can scan the infected tourist that may have disease like Covid-19 from the traveling (Willis, 2021). This is very useful because it helps to seperate between normal tourist and infected tourist in order to prevent the clusters in the country. 

In contrast, there are some downsides of the mass surveillance as it directly affected personal information and privacy rights. Firstly, government can use authority to harm innocent people. For instance, if someone does not have any intention to commit the crime, but they just disagree with some of the country political, and government can tempt to listen to their conversation, which they can enforce the law to punish that person without committing anything wrong (Barnes, 2021). It demonstrates that it is unfair because they will get arrested from just conversation, so it is unacceptable. In other similar case, in the China CCTV can alarm an innocent people that look like minority (Willis, 2021). The other dawback is that it is insecure. According to Widely watch Televisions report, those ID photos of chinese that come from CCTV cameras are being sold for around 36 cents, which means that their personal ID have been stolen and used for financial credits (As cited in Willis, 2021). Moreover, it can make people to have more obstacles in their life as a quote from Mc Farland " a person can be harmed by the revealation of sensitive personal info" ( As cited in Barnes 2021). For example, if that person are good now, but they have bad crime or illness history, more people will avoid him in the real life.    

To summarize, the disadvantages of mass surveillance outweigh the advantages as it directly interrupted personal information and life because it can reveal the secret information of people. Also it can harm innocent people by arresting them without doing any thing wrong. Moreover, sometimes government collect the security data illegally by accessing personal information without any progress of permission. Some governments use these datas for their own benefits. Furthermore, reveal personal information can make their life become more difficult as it makes people to avoid person who may have mental illness or crime history. No one in this world wants any aspects in their life to be reveal in public.