Spying, Surveillance, and Privacy in the 21st Century

Businesses used to contact buyers by placing advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and on television and radio. Now they monitor your online shopping and product browsing habits. This book looks as the ways businesses spy on patrons, examines the reasons the marketplace has changed, argues the pros and cons of keeping tabs on cyber shoppers, and outlines the advantages corporate mining gives to larger companies.

Edward Snowden worked as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency collecting information culled by domestic surveillance programs. Disturbed by the spying on US citizens, he fled to China and leaked classified documents that were published in newspapers. Living now in Russia and the subject of a 2016 film titled Snowden, he has been charged with violations of the Espionage Act. This book examines the ways the NSA spied on citizens, the moral arguments for doing so, and presents arguments about why Snowden is a hero and a traitor.

The new ways governments, law enforcement agencies, and businesses can keep tabs on people is jaw dropping. This book examines the many new methods of data collection, the rationale behind developing them, the pros and cons of developing these new technologies, and the difficulties of restricting the use of these technologies before laws can be passed to protect citizens from abuses. This technology is getting more sophisticated as well as more common, leaving us to wonder if it really is a progressive development.

The Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has allowed the government to monitor communication by phone, email, or social media, to access credit and bank reports, or to track activity on the internet. This book examines the new methods used by the government to spy on citizens, the reasons it became necessary, and the tradeoffs between increased safety and a loss of privacy, and the moral arguments for and against these tradeoffs.

Our constitution guarantees the right against unreasonable search and seizure, but where does the line get drawn in these days of high-tech surveillance? This book not only looks at the new methods for spying on citizens, but on the technological shortfalls that allow hackers to gain private information. It also presents the pros and cons between government security and government intrusion. How do we strike a balance between protecting citizens and giving up our freedoms? The legal and moral questions are evolving.