Question

According to the website of the Los Angeles Times, "the immigration and customs enforcement agency often collects citizens' personal information across legal and moral boundaries". The Bureau has established a wide range of monitoring infrastructure, which can track anyone at almost any time. And the Bureau improved its monitoring capability almost completely secretly and unsupervised, avoiding the relevant regulations. Facts have proved that monitoring has little effect in combating terrorism. Instead, our ordinary citizens have become suspects, and citizens have no privacy at all. What is the purpose of the authorities and governments?

Answer 1

The government's purpose in collecting personal information and conducting surveillance is primarily for national security and public safety, but these actions are balanced against individual privacy rights. Cases like Carpenter v. United States show a trend towards increased privacy protections. While surveillance technologies pose privacy risks, they also assist in law enforcement and public safety initiatives.

Step-by-step explanation:

The purpose of authorities and governments in collecting personal information and conducting surveillance often centers around the need for national security and public safety, particularly in the context of combating terrorism and criminal activity. However, the expansion of surveillance capabilities can lead to tensions between government protection and individual privacy rights. Technologies like GPS, electronic toll collection, and widespread video surveillance can serve both practical functions for societal benefit and more contentious ones, such as tracking individuals without their consent. Civil liberties advocates argue that legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, has overstepped by easing the process for government officials to obtain search warrants, or by bypassing warrant requirements, thereby infringing on personal freedoms.

The legal and ethical limits of these activities are often debated, particularly concerning the consequences of racial profiling, as with the notorious Senate Bill 1070, which critiqued for potentially enabling 'Driving While Brown' scenarios. Cases like Carpenter v. United States have begun to set precedents reinforcing the need for warrants to gather phone location data, indicating a possible shift towards privacy protection. Despite the potential misuse of surveillance technologies, they also enable efficient law enforcement cooperation across borders against smuggling networks and other forms of organized crime.