Friday, November 6, 2009

Invasion of Privacy or Right of the Government?

Several years ago the government officials admitted to conducting wire taps into the United States citizens personal lines. This is used to listen to conversations which might pose as a threat to the nation. Through the wiretapping the government is able to sort through key words that may suggest a threat or they may listen in on supicious individuals.
Though wiretapping is suppossed to be a great way to prevent dangerous situations before they happen it is an invasion of privacy. This is against everything the first and in some ways the ninth ammendment stand for. The first ammendment discusses the right to freedom of speech. Wiretapping forces people to need to be careful about what they say on the phone even though they have the right to say what they want. The ninth ammendment is the protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights. This includes right to privacy. Wiretapping is definately an invasion of privacy and should be outlawed.
There is word that the government has even managed to tap their way into text messages. If these were meant to be read by everyone they would have been sent to everyone. The government does not have the right to monitor private text messages and individuals have a right to their privacy.

1 comment:

  1. I strongly agree with your resentment to the Government for the warrantless wiretapping... but I have to say I somewhat disagree with the statement that "the government does not have the right to monitor private text messages..." because I believe they do have that right (unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Administration), especially when our country has been and is still in danger. I do totally agree that they SHOULDN'T be reading them, and I do feel completely invaded and hate the fact that we have to watch what we say, but even if they do monitor us they'll realize most of us are not a threat. So I say let them monitor us, let them laugh over our embarrassing messages and let them realize we're just students, just people having a little fun.

    Like I said in my previous post, it seems pretty easy to obtain a warrant, and I wish that was the way it had to be done. But unfortunately our country was in great danger years ago, I feel that danger has lessened a bit now, but who I am to predict such a thing? No matter how much I am against this warrantless wiretapping, I think the Bush Administration did the right thing by "okay-ing" it. The government is not doing it to solely invade our privacy, they're doing it for our safety... We just need to try to keep that in mind.

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