This is far from accurate though. While the government certainly does, and this is no secret, record things about the American people, it is certainly only for our safety. Ever since the 9/11 bombings, our country has stepped up security three-fold. This is most noticeable in the airports; the conduit for the brutal attacks. Where you used to go through security with pretty much just a visual check and a quick metal detector, you now spend quite a bit of time. It is not uncommon to see a person having to take off coat, shoes, and belt to be searched and patted down, to make sure they are not a threat. To most though, this is just an annoyance and means they have to wake up even earlier for their flight lest they miss it due to a convoluted security check.

Annoying as they might be, these time consuming practices help our country stay safe every day. The Patriot Act is a bill enacted by the government that essentially gives them free reign to look over any communications and intercept and listen to them, whether it be public or private. While most Americans support the government, especially if the government is just trying to look out for the people’s safety, the Patriot Act raised some eyebrows. People were worried that it would be the coming of Big Brother and the government would watch them do everything.

This is hardly true, but it is important to be knowledgeable and enjoy some privacy. Start with your Internet connection. Use an anonymous proxy server and surf the web anonymously and safely. Your private proxy will make you untraceable to any interlopers wishing to follow your online data trail.

There are two sides to this argument; one says yes to the cameras, and one says no. The side supporting the video surveillance says that the threat of cameras watching employees will stop them from doing anything the company would not support. Also, it takes out the risk of trusting an employee with too sensitive of a task. The other side says that this trust is exactly what makes an employee loyal; if they are being watched all of the time, they won’t feel trustworthy themselves. Also, it just isn’t right to perform monitoring of someone without them knowing, and you know the employees wouldn’t know.

There was a court case recently that explored this issue. Two young woman who worked in a company building to help reestablish orphans and underprivileged kids lives back together shared a cubicle in their office space. The two woman one day discovered a video camera in their office, and complained to the manager, who did nothing. They then went to court, and after a long deliberation, it turns out the cameras were only on after the pair left work. Upon this point, the women lost the case.

This begs the question; who was right? It could go both ways; one could say the girls were right because, in their testimonies, they were often there after work and even claimed to changing for the gym in the office. The employer isn’t completely at fault here though, for he just wanted to protect his computers, and make sure nobody was breaking in at night. Obviously the girls lost the case, so surveillance won out.

When dealing with online surveillance though, the answer is always no; often times it is a hacker doing the watching too. To avoid these problems, try using an anonymous proxy server to encrypt and encode all of your transmissions. A private proxy server will also ensure anonymous browsing on the Internet as well, so that hacker can’t perform any surveillance on your browsing.