Government Surveillance
Every thing you do on the Internet is being watched and recorded by somebody or something. This isn’t a major problem, as a lot of the stuff and surfing you do on the web is just mindless browsing. It becomes more serious when you begin to use credit card numbers, bank account information, or passwords and log in systems.
The government is behind a lot of these security surveillance systems, and this isn’t meant to cut them down. After all, they are dealing with matters of national security, and that is nothing to joke around with. They have all sorts of information intercepting programs in place, and many other safe guards that prevent any citizen from consorting with terrorists or doing any other illegal activity.
Some people are a bit worried by all of this though. They have been law-abiding citizens throughout their entire life, so why are they being watched? They feel that this amount of time the government takes watching them could be put to useful other stuff. They think you should have to screw up first before being monitored.
The government isn’t willing to take that chance. It only takes one split second decision for a good citizen to become a bad citizen. The government actually wishes to step up security, and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are not happy about it. The service providers have to obtain all of the extra technology they are to put on their networks to monitor people themselves, and to pay for it themselves. You can bet they won’t be bending over backwards to stop any terrorists on their network.
It seems like privacy is an idyllic memory from long ago, something that was sacrificed with the advent of the “Information Age”. Everybody is in everybody’s business on the Internet now, and privacy is almost completely gone. Consider the social networking site; this is privacy that is completely given up, completely voluntarily. These users write down all of their information to be posted for “friends” to moon over, and people to comment on. Physical images, often a bit obscene are posted and allowed for everyone to see. This is a phenomenon that was unheard of fifty years ago.
Although putting yourself out for everyone to see on FaceBook or MySpace (why not start one called Narcissism.com?) is completely and totally optional, privacy things like an IP address are not. Everyone has an IP address which points back to their house or point of connection. This IP address is like a virtual nametag that shows all sorts of Internet related content, completely publicly. Why this is public while it represents such a privacy risk baffles some people. You can use a change IP proxy to change your IP address and get rid of this threat to your security. Changing your IP address will help regain at least some of your Internet privacy.
KL Says:
Maybe government surveillance isn’t a problem CURRENTLY in the US, but it certainly is in other countries – and could be here, too, at some time – such as the next time we have a paranoid VP.