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Presentation of the Issue Governments employ spyware to track potential criminals and suspected terrorists, specifically Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida after the event of September 11, 2001 at New York and the Pentagon. It can happen however that these suspected criminals turn out to be innocent civilians. If this turns out to be the case, the government will have been invading certain individuals privacy for a little or no reason. Government officials monitor civilians at work and at home without them knowing.
It was recently estimated in Great Britain that the average inhabitant of London would be filmed on Close Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) as often as 300 times a day. Telephone calls can be tapped, mobile phones traced, e-mails can be read and even ones keystrokes on a PC can be monitored, as is often the case when criminal justice is involved. Human rights activists debate the fact that the governments use of Spyware is excessive and goes against the right to privacy. Given the tragic events of 9 - 11, is this Big Brother approach of modern government justified or have governments become excessive in their surveillance? IT background of the issue There are two types of spyware: Hardware includes Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras, hidden microphones, GPS satellites, keyloggers, telephone taps, and bug tracers. CCTV cameras are used for monitoring jobs within a certain district and provide visual footage of the occurrences.
Microphones are similar, but provide audio footage. Both devices provide digital feedback because it is more efficient to transmit and to record than analogous footage. Software key loggers are a stealth software product that records every keystroke on a keyboard of a computer. They can be installed on machines by sending them as an e-mail attachment and they are mostly undetectable to anti-virus programs, but these are being modified to intercept spyware programs as well. The hardware version of key loggers are often mistaken for an obligatory part of the hardware and so are ignored because they either look like a part of a keyboard or are made to look like normal keyboards. Spyware by the name of Real Time Spy is capable of monitoring subjects as they are online, which is known as real-time spyware, and then there is also spyware that allows the user to monitor all e-mail traffic on the subjects machine, which is known as WebMail Spy.
Another limited form of key logger is a Trojan horse. These are designed to imitate a certain program, such as a login program and store the information that the unsuspecting user types and transmit it back to the originator. Not all government spying is done with intricate Spyware programs though. They also have access to vast databases where they can find anything related to a specific topic- this technique is known as detaining.
Recent accusations concerning the employ of this type of software to spy on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have been made in Britain. Clare Short, the former British government minister was accused of leaking this confidential information to the press. Impact of the issue The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, created in 1978, allows the US government to search through private documents and personal information merely by indicating that the search might be linked to a matter that concerns national security, whether or not a crime has been proven or even committed. The events of September 11, 2001 in New York and at the Pentagon implemented new security measures, the chief one being greater surveillance measures and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which provides investigation and protection services against threats to the USA. Maine State Law declares that individuals are protected against spying in private domains and that disregarding this law is a class D crime. Limited surveillance is however permitted, for example recording a conversation without the other speaker knowing it.
It is legal in the State of Maine, however this is not the case in every State. Maine's privacy laws are similar to the worlds laws, and many actions undertaken by the DHS are labelled as illegal in Maine; so it is highly likely that the laws are the same in other States, yet go un persecuted. The US Pentagons Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, an invention of the Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), endeavours to identify and track down terrorists and was closed in September 2003 because Congress believed the government was given too much liberty in monitoring its citizens and checking personal information. It was feared that such power had Orwellian implications. Solutions to problems arising from the issue Monitoring the government is one way of limiting their ability to spy on people. Creating an independent branch charged with the duty of studying and limiting the governments ability to employ spy technology seems a plausible and somewhat acceptable response to the recent increase in use of spy technology, but on closer analysis it seems a bit far fetched.
It would be hard indeed to create such an independent branch when the problem of funding comes into perspective. If this institution were funded by the government then they would essentially own it. Since it is impossible for a government-monitoring and government-owned company to function properly, the population or some other company would have to provide funds. The introduction of newer privacy laws would further inhibit the governments ability to employ such measures of surveillance. The primary weakness of this solution is that the government makes these laws and that so far whatever law has been made to obstruct their advance has either been gone around or ignored. But then again, newer laws, if correctly phrased could prevent a great deal more of spying and could potentially bring about the end of spyware use.
Yet this also seems a bit far-fetched. The former argument seems the easiest way to keep the governments use of spyware to a bare minimum. A monitoring organization could ensure that the government only employed spyware when they absolutely had to: to identify and track potential criminals and / or terrorists. Bibliography - Patrick Killer, Is your Boss spying on you? , Good Housekeeping Magazine, January 2004 - Daniel Fidel Ferrer & Mary Mead, Uncovering the Spy Network, Computers in Libraries Magazine, May 2003 - Steven Levy, Can snooping stop terrorism? , Newsweek U. S. Edition, October 2003 - SPY SOFTWARE FREE DOWNLOAD, advertisement from web - Pamela S.
Turner, I spy with my High-Tech Eye, Odyssey Magazine, October 2003 - Chris Trouble, Cant sneak under this Radar, Smart Computing in Plain English, February 2002 - This Month in Odyssey, Odyssey Magazine, September 2003 - Kathryn Skelton, At work school the road SOMEONE IS WATCHING, Sun Journal, October 2003 - Michele Orecklin, Checking what you check out, Time Magazine, May 2003 - Kathi ann M. Kowalski, Not above the law, Cobblestone Magazine, January 2003 - Andrew Brandt, What your Antivirus wont tell you, PC World Magazine, May 2003 - Enemy of State, directed by Tony Scott at Buena Vista Home Entertainment Studio, partial script link: web tml. html - Adam Zagorin, A Bug Problem at U. N. , Time Magazine, March 2004
Free research essays on topics related to: personal information, real time, september 11 2001, time magazine, e mail
Research essay sample on September 11 2001 E Mail
