2
SCHOLARLY ACTIVITY
Introduction
America as a nation has had historical reverence for citizens' rights such as a right to liberty,
right to privacy and civil right. However, in recent times the federal government, local as well as
state governments have been passing laws to make America safer and safer; as this happens, they
are slowly chewing away citizens' rights they have enjoyed for decades. The digital age has been
introduced where cameras capture every move of a person that would have been deemed a
private life; entering malls, public buildings, walking or driving along roads are obtained by the
government in the name of safety and security. The work below analyses the rights versus safety.
Constitution and Technology
According to Sharp (2013), the USA constitution provides for the rights to privacy of
individuals in a clause of the 14
th
amendment. The amendment inhibits all states from making or
enforcing any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of Americans; there should also be
no law that deprives liberty, life or property without due process of the law. Further, the Supreme
Court interpreted the bill of rights to contain a zone of privacy where the state has no business to
know for example what movie one is watching in his house at home. Another example is Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) that imposes the privacy rights on different privacy statements and
privacy policies. Now, I believe the constitution has slightly deviated from protecting such rights
by providing strict surveillance that is busy watching what I do, where I do it and how.
An Issue that has been in the News
In 2013 Edward Snowden, a government contractor then leaked that National Security
Agency was doing surveillance on Americans phone communications and online. The NSA in
the name of providing security seeks to get data on how individuals communicate behave with
their phones; this in an aim to be able to identify leads to criminal activities on time and take
actions. I believe this is a blatant violation of human rights as it contravenes the “right to be left
alone” as Justice Brandeis described it (Todd 1964).
