The 21 st century has seen the growth of technologies with capabilities, such as facial recognition, behavioral recognition, streetlights with recording abilities, and wide-area surveillance among other technologies that track and store all people's movements and activities. The present century also features counterterrorism measures with questions arising as to which is important between freedom and privacy and the need for securing national interests (Kayyali, 2014). The paper discusses that the growing cases of significant information collection are unacceptable while it is crucial to implement greater constraints on the emerging technologies to ensure individual privacy.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution safeguards the right to privacy while it prohibits unwarranted "search and seizure. With the government collecting and storing information relating to its citizens, it usually undertakes electronic types of forbidden searches. Any act allowing government agencies to increase power needs rejecting, particularly various governmental organizations have distorted power over the population in the past. Increased power leads to higher chances for its abuse (Kayyali, 2014). Furthermore, instituting stricter control through using emerging technologies might result in the targeting of certain religious and ethnic groups in a biased and unfair way. The practice is unethical in itself while it also threatens to set the groups against the society while at the same time leading to the creation of additional future terrorists (Berman, 2011). Instituting tighter security controls also end up keeping out foreigners, including tourists, scientists, and students among others whose knowledge and skills would contribute to improved performance of the economy.
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Overall, increased surveillance of individuals by the government through emerging technologies is unacceptable mostly because it interferes with the rights to privacy and freedom of its citizens. It is crucial to have greater constraints on such technologies to safeguard the privacy of individuals (Berman, 2011). Nevertheless, when it comes to the right to "plead the faith" to ensure people do not incriminate themselves, they should be waived when sufficient evidence exists that certain individuals pose an immense threat to national security, particularly those affiliated with terrorist groups.
References
Berman, E. (2011). Domestic intelligence: New powers, new risks. Retrieved from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/domestic-intelligence-new-powers-new-risks
Kayyali, D. (2014). Local use of military equipment is drawing scrutiny—but local use of surveillance equipment and training needs attention too. Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/09/local-use-military-equipment-drawing-scrutiny-local-surveillance-equipment-and
