Technology companies Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Linked-In, and Facebook have filed a lawsuit against the government on surveillance.
The purpose of the lawsuit is for the rights to allow there users to know that they are monitoring them. Since the companies are obligated to share information to the government when requested, they wanted to let their users know that it’s the government requesting the information and not the companies spying on their users.
Government surveillance has become a thing of everyday life, whether or not it should be considered to be the government spying on its citizens or protecting them. However, for some, this might seem as if the government is overstepping, with recent events the public as criticized the government for not stopping or preventing attacks on citizens. For some citizens, these act as a reminder that everything you place on the web is open to be viewed by others, even if it is “private.”
The Internet is not private; everything you place on it is now out in the universe forever. If in high school you read George Orwell’s “1984,” you know that the fears sparked in this book are becoming a part of our reality.
Both the technology companies and the government reached an agreement outside of court. However if you are like me and can be one of the many people they are monitoring, you want to know what they’re monitoring and why.
In the end, the government continues to monitor what we search online in the privacies of our homes or in public. What we did gain from these companies fighting back against the government surveillance is a little information on what they are monitoring and if it’s general law enforcement information.
What this means for you, the college community, is that as students you need to be more careful about what you publish on social media sites. If you are an online blogger, switch to the old-fashion way. Your privacy should be something that you take very seriously and want to protect.
Today we live in a world that is open and worldwide, since technology allows us to move across the world in seconds with just a click of the mouse. With this ability, monitoring what people are searching has become a part of our reality; one that allows each of us to take into account the responsibilities of what we are posting on the Internet and what others are posting about us.