The Communication Revolution, Entertainment , and the Arts Essay

The Communication Revolution, Entertainment , and the Arts - Essay Example The issue of surveillance has not eluded the American public and mix reactions pertaining to the matter continue to bombard the political system. Proposed bills such as Total Information Awareness would have granted the government access to the most promiscuous details in the life of any American they deem a threat to democracy. The setup of the internet creates questions of whether or not those who use it are really protected. The cookies that websites place in the computer systems can be vehicles in meddling with personal privacy. Alongside this, the internet can also serve the purpose of hacking credit card information and emails that has been recorded to incite cases such as identity theft. The availability of these technologies has introduced a number of different social phenomena that are almost incomprehensible years ago. Things like googling yourself has surfaced and has even become a colloquially accepted verb. All the other networking websites like MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, etc. compels people to communicate with acquaintances and strangers. In 2003 the American congress prevented the Pentagon in its planned project designed to allow surveillance of any American through accessing their e-mail and other databases that contain information regarding finances, health and travel. Had the project been allowed, it would have allowed Army intelligence to use any of the information they have gathered against anyone. Luckily, both Houses agreed that this is a direct threat to personal privacy and the Total Information Awareness project was put into question (Clymer, 2003). The Pentagon concept would have given analysts who are highly trained in Intelligence to accumulate and perceive information linking any citizen to any group, enabling alerts and allowing shared data among individual computers to be viewed. They would have had