Somebody’s watching you: Social media and surveillance

Somebody’s watching you: Social media and surveillance

1.

The article talks about how social media can often be effective in blurring the lines between different 'life spheres' and not bringing about a sense of separation between 'different worlds.' Things like this mainly come about due to social networks being quite business-oriented and data being something that is worth quite a lot nowadays in a time where data mining is becoming more and more used. Government surveillance is also something that is looked upon quite warily since while they may claim to seeking total surveillance for the protecting freedom against terrorists, the breach of freedom for citizens it entails is quite a huge sacrifice.

2.

While the protection of citizens is something I believe the government should do their best to do, I do believe that a line has to be drawn between them actually defending against national threats and plain snooping on its citizens. Issues like this have arisen in the media with stories such as the NSA phone tapping scandal and also more locally, the News of the World phone hacking case where phones were being hacked for information to be used by the media. All things like this make you realise that perhaps it's quite a big price that we pay for protection by the executive.