How far should a state have a right to monitor the actions of people within its borders?

All across the world, for the past century, the government’s monitoring of its people within their borders has become increasingly prevalent. From the first official census of the population of London in 1801, to the comprehensive closed-circuit camera network that now presides over the very same city, state supervision has indeed progressed by leaps and bounds. Perhaps the concern most synonymous with this state of affairs, and indeed the most pressing one, is that such a continuing trend will possibly end us up in a dystopian, Orwellian world of 1984. With the thought our every move monitored, our every choice inspected, it has brought forth innumerable activists groups who try to stem this trend. However, many others also see the benefits and reasoning as to why such state surveillance may be necessary, and this is something I will consider in my essay. On the whole, nonetheless, I do feel that the autonomy of a government should be curtailed, and that the state should only be able to monitor individuals within its jurisdiction when fundamental socioeconomic or security concerns have been breached. 

  Looking at it from an economical and social standpoint, monitoring the people can bring tangible benefits, such as knowing what the state should be focusing efforts and subsidies on. Just as the market economy allocates resources by addressing the demand and supply indicators of the system, the government uses information and statistics to plan the country’s future. Compilation of these vitals requires various censuses to be conducted, checks to be followed up on and surveys to be issued. To this end, the population should comply and cooperate with said government efforts. For example, Singapore’s government frequently updates its unemployed and lower income family statistics through information gathered from various channels, and uses this information to decide when and to whom to disburse financial assistance.

 However, in recent years, the growing trend of such information going online has increased, and with it has come new security concerns over the ease of obtaining this information. The government may have sincere intentions of doing so to make the particulars available online, but this has not stopped individuals from attempting to and successfully obtaining the information for their own means. Most recently, an article in The Straits Times ran an incident where a local net security firm hacked school portals with the intention of ascertaining their security strength. It was able to fish over five thousand student particulars, with sensitive information such as their family income, address and family structure for the taking. This has not been an isolated case. Last year, a human error rendered just as many social security numbers in the United Kingdom available to many net users. With this in mind, we must realize that the right allocated to a government to supervise its people should only be given when it has proven capable in handling such sensitive information.

On the other hand, perhaps the most obvious argument for such autonomy to be conceded to the state is that of maintaining national security. As the government in power, regardless of the kind of political system, it is their duty to ensure the security and safety of its residents. To this end, monitoring its own citizens can help to tighten security holes. While it cannot legally track down foreign threats outside its borders, it can at least keep checks on potential local dissidents, radicals or fundamentalists to protect its other citizens. Understanding this, we should allow the state to carry out supervision for it is done for our own interest and safety.

  Despite this, we must realize that invasive surveillance for security is an unnecessary nuisance to the majority of the population that has to put up with for small tangible benefits. Indeed, many terror attacks have slipped past the eye of the state, whilst its people continue to live with closed circuit cameras, line tapping and other invasive monitoring techniques. When the September 11^th attacks in America, the subsequent Patriot Act gave power to the state to, at any time, tap the phone lines of any family. Yet with this constant invasion of privacy, acts of carnage such as the Virginia Tech killings and other related rampages have been committed. In essence, we have allowed the government to apply double standards, requiring us to accede to the constant possibility of having our every move watched, while not addressing the rationale for doing so. This shows that even with such high degrees of scrutiny, the security concern that is tied to monitoring residents of a country is left unresolved. As such, the government should not be allowed to conduct such invasive surveillance. 

 Furthermore, the use of supervisory equipment has become more objectionable in recent times, where some governments have made use of these devices to suppress the voices of the population, which is certainly an undesirable effect that should be removed.  This weeding out of freedom of expression presented itself when, last year before the Beijing Olympics, throngs of pro-Tibetan activists were rounded up by Chinese paramilitary forces and detained for weeks, even though no tangible harm had been committed by the party. The Chinese government also regularly supervises the use of the internet among its vast Information Technology (IT) savvy populace, having blocked off numerous sites that question China’s political mannerisms in the process. Attempts to suppress the kind of news fed to the population and attempts to quell negative sentiment have indeed arrived with the help of monitoring devices. To some, it already bears resemblance to the Big Brother dystopia of 1984. For them, it is only a case of how fast technology can progress to achieve that kind of domination. While companies are on the right track to producing that kind of equipment, governments are on track to renewing constitutions that legally include them. In this light, a stop to this oppressive scrutiny must be undertaken. The watchers need to be watched, and the state should not be allowed to monitor our every move at the expense of our freedom.

           If we take a step back and examine all the points discussed, we can see that there is still a genuine need for the government to monitor people within its borders. Apart from keeping the peace where possible, it helps to direct the government to signals of areas of pressing concern. Nonetheless, this effect has been eroded by the increasingly enveloping kind of scrutiny we are placed under. Demographics and statistics are signs of good governmental inspection, but line tapping and internet supervision are obvious signs of repression. The fine line that divides national security and an oppressive sociopolitical scenario has been broached, and governments should only concern themselves with supervising the populace where basic socioeconomic or security concerns are compromised.

After doing it, I felt that my stand still isn't that definite. Oh well. Going to submit it to the teacher and see what she has to say about it.