When I was little, my mother always told me that, “Honesty is the only
policy,” and, “Don’t worry there aren’t any monsters watching you.” At that age, I didn’t have any reason to
believe any different about the fascinating world around me. That was until the
logic I developed proved that the world in the 21st century was far
from that guideline. We think that today we all can set up security codes,
passwords, and computer programs that protect us from being exposed to the
government and identity thieves everywhere. As Edward Snowden exposed though,
we’re all being watched every minute of the day by corporations and mainly, the
federal government. Honestly, even though people seem to go berserk over anything
dealing with the right of privacy, it’s logical why we’re being watched.
Human nature makes us naturally curious and have the lust to micromanage,
and this curiousness translates to government, or even at home, school, and
work. This is because we all want to be mind-readers and if we know what others
think, we can be better informed about the world around us and how to manage
it. For example, those performance reviews, cross-checks, cameras, or even last
night’s math homework is a form off curiosity that allows someone to manage
others more efficiently. Even with the beneficial and logical aspect of
surveillance, since it brings so much conflict, the cons outweigh the pros. We don’t
need those brawls
in our local Meijer or neighborhood, right? Whatever the case though,
surveillance leads the demise and insanity of nations.
Any surveillance of a people creates paranoia and when
there’s such a huge case like the NSA, the paranoia chaotically rampages
through a nation. When Edward Snowden became a whistleblower and quoted, “Even
if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,”, the
fact that this situation has been happening for years and years frightened
everyone and caused a storm of questioning and resulting paranoia. Take
Shakespeare’s Hamlet: when King Claudius decided to spy on the
Prince of Denmark for his seeming lunacy and lust for Ophelia, in the same way
as the NSA and terrorism, many of the investigations “behind the curtain” didn’t
turn up anything. Then, when the investigation went too far and Hamlet was set
up with his own mother Gertrude, it lead to a mistake and the killing of the
royal courtier Polonius. And after all that, the only explanation that could
come out of Hamlet’s mouth in response to his mother is, “Thou wretched, rash,
intruding fool, farewell…Take thy fortune.”
Hamlet is right in a sense though. What other reaction
is he going to have to surveillance and deception than paranoia? As with the
U.S. people too, any lie or deceit created by a body we trust, such as the
federal government will cause an imminent, widespread craziness. Even if the
NSA is trying to patch up a problem like national security, nobody wants to be
lied to and deceived when it comes to, “What are you doing?” And when there’s no honesty, a fight will then ensue by
not just individuals like Snowden, but a whole group of people or even a nation.
This is because we’re still fighting for our liberty just like it was in 1776,
even if it is involving the modern issue of technological privacy, and it’s in
our blood to fight back. And when it comes to this idea, a person won’t ask,
“What am I doing?” They’ll only
consider what’s right and wrong in protecting their identity. If it leads to
dismal killing, it’s NSA only the NSA’s fault and it teaches them a lesson. And
the same situation arose in Hamlet
too: there’s a swordfight, deaths of four royals, and a new order who took
over. In the end, Claudius’ actions made him a product of himself and lead to Denmark’s
paranoia, just like with the NSA and its PR.
Shouldn’t the NSA have recognized that surveillance in
the way they used it was somewhat wrong? In any workplace, or even at home,
eavesdropping is unethical and frowned upon, since it creates uneasiness and
tension. So, in the most prestigious of workplaces, the federal government,
where in many Congressional sessions the issue of right to privacy was upheld,
isn’t it unmoral to spy on other government representatives and Americans
because of those reasons? I guess the answer is no because they, even with the backlash, go through millions of
phone records each day to root out the next potential suicide bomber in a major
metropolitan area. In Hamlet, the
Prince of Denmark said it well to Ophelia in, “Get thee to a nunnery…Why
wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” Truly though, Hamlet can say that to the
U.S. government too, and even if there isn’t any prostitution involved (except in
the Secret
Service), the repeated unmoral actions of the NSA and other officials is
unacceptable and unexplainable.
If you look around today, other countries like Russia, Canada, Iran,
Pakistan, and even China are laughing at us in how the American people
mindlessly fight each other, weakening the fabric of our nation. Also, they chuckle
in how in a Democracy, there’s surveillance like in a Communist system, and how
we still try to spy, even when it works .000001% of the time. Then, there’s the
other side of the issue where in the rare case a lead does appear, in our
efforts to kill these potential terrorists with drones, we end up killing
innocent bystanders. All that comes out is weakened relations with other
nations and the question, “Why are you accessing our technology when we’re not
at war?” To sum it up, morality is thrown out the window with surveillance and
when one body tries to examine another, the other gets paranoid and the end
result isn’t pleasant. Look at what happened to Hamlet and King Claudius when
Claudius spied and planned to deceive him, they both ended up killing each
other. The same is true, physically and emotionally, in the real world too.
“And for what?” Snowden sounds a loud alarm with that statement
and even with the small benefit of increasing the chances of catching a fugitive
or terrorist, it’s morally wrong. Just look what it did to Hamlet in text and
in the Hollywood movie, it made him a lunatic. The U.S. already has too many
problems and we don’t need to be exposing ourselves to something we can
prevent. We don’t even need a lot of statistics to show that surveillance isn’t
effective or ethical. You can just use past knowledge and say: why wasn’t the
Boston Marathon bomber stopped or why the Malaysian Airlines plane
disappearance wasn’t prevented? In all, when I walk into an airport and have to
have a full body scan and not bring bottles over 3 ounces for that .000001%,
something isn’t working right. 