 Welcome back to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Cedric Hughes, and today I'm joined by two special guests. Hi, I'm Zoe Poppingay. I'm Ben Skinner. Today, we'll be discussing the impacts of surveillance on our nation. But first, let's take a look towards the views of the Davis community. I think it's kind of hard to say in a lot of scenarios because on one hand, it kind of feels like a violation of privacy to have mass surveillance constantly going and have every one of my actions or at least most of them be monitored. But on the other hand, it's also really good for catching criminals and for stopping crime to be able to survey basically everything and see what's going on. I think that it kind of comes on to what you consider mass surveillance. And if you are like taping people in their homes, I think that public spaces, I think it's understandable for surveillance to be had. But if by mass surveillance, you mean that like all homes are monitored and especially personal devices is a big thing because a lot of people say and believe and it's all confirmed at this point that a lot of personal devices monitor your data and your personal choices and a lot of details about your personal life. I think that that's probably overstepping it. And I think that that kind of goes into a lot of violations of your, of the like the amendments of the constitution. I think specifically, I think it's fourth amendment is a big one that's violated by that. But I think that public surveillance is probably does more good than harm. But I think that it's a lot harder to say for personal stuff. Hi, I'm Joseph Hendricks and unfortunately I will not be in this episode of Teens on Topic but I will be answering the question. I think that mass surveillance is does a lot of harm and depending on what, who is in charge of this mass surveillance, they can influence how bad and how good it is. For example, I think that Facebook and companies like Apple are treating this, treating mass surveillance very poorly. I think that they should not be using it for, I don't think you should have face ID for your iPhone. I think you should just be able to put in a password. And I feel like listening in on people's conversations for advertising is also very, very dystopian-esque. And I think that overall, it's not a very good thing. So that's my opinion. I think it's 50-50, there's pros and cons to it. I feel that to fight terrorism, excuse me, in crime, it's always nice to have that safety net on the streets but also I think it can create probably some kind of hysteria. People see the wrong thing or think they see the thing or the wrong person could get in trouble for it. So it goes both ways in my opinion. I would say, moving forward for me, that I would probably lean towards having them watching over us. But eventually it's a big brother issue and no one wants that either. I guess it just depends on what level of surveillance it is. You have technology, cameras, stuff like that. And so I would say certain levels are okay but others, I would be against it. Just kind of the government all up in our business, kind of knowing where we're going at all times. That's why I'm gonna move to the mountains. What levels of mass surveillance are helpful and then what might be harmful, like you said? I guess the helpful ones would be those that, maybe law enforcement would use, kind of for facial recognition, looking for criminals, stuff like that. And then the ones that would hinder, I'd say, would be those used for technology purposes, just for advertising and trying to, there's no privacy looking where you're looking as far as online and things like that. Doesn't that, is that good? Yeah, thank you. Well, we've seen a lot of great opinions from members of the Davis community. So Ben and Zoe, we saw a lot of discussion surrounding what's more important for our country. Is it going to be security or is it going to be privacy? And how do we attain a mixture of both? So where do you guys fall on this issue, Zoe? I know the number one benefit mentioned with security was that it could stop crimes and, excuse me, it could stop crimes and there's a lot of criminal identification that can happen because of it. But I feel like with, even with this new cyber technology of identification and constant security, it would make things a lot safer but then people would still find ways to work around it. People have always found ways to work around the new innovations that is security. And then they're also given an outlet, an even bigger outlet, to further enhance, evolve their, to further evolve in terms of crime with security. I mean, such a big violation of privacy. Like I'm, just the very thought of constant surveillance makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. And you don't have to be a guilty person to be uncomfortable with just being constantly watched. And I know we always talk about current cancel culture and having your digital image being forever existing, which is causing a lot of problems in terms of not allowing very much character growth because even if you change as a person from what is previously recorded, this isn't specifically security, just you overall as a person. If you doing something, being recorded, no matter how much you've changed, that's still there and it's still like a physical quantification of who you once were. And so I feel like that forever frozen in time thing is a really scary thing that just doesn't, it just doesn't sit well with me. Sure. Ben, what do you think? I think it's important to make a distinction between things done by private companies and things done by the government. Are you specifically talking about which one of those two things here? Well, we can talk about both. So maybe do you wanna start with the government? Sure, sure, yeah. So I think that's something that is really not even necessarily that helpful. I think the level of data you would need to collect to actually be able to prevent terrorism or whatever from happening is just simply unrealistic. Like there's no amount of data you can collect. Like no amount of pictures you can take that allow you to predict exactly when a person, like who is a terrorist, right? So I think it's important to understand that mass surveillance isn't necessarily something where we choose to do that and we automatically see benefits, right? Well, I think that is really pretty inappropriate for that to be something that the government's doing. Partly for privacy violations. But I mean, like I just said, I think it's not even that helpful. So when you weigh the pros versus cons, it's really not something that we need to be doing. And I think there are major threats that can happen. Like there's kind of more small scale things like security cameras in public areas. But I think there's things too, like collecting people's DNA, like that kind of thing. I mean, I guess that's not really surveillance but like the whole idea of like collecting mass amounts of information on people, to me that's far more troubling than simply like we're gonna put up a security camera at the farmer's market or whatever. Sure. And so I think you both kind of touched on the negatives that surveillance can bring both in kind of the feeling of not being comfortable with it and also the ineffectiveness of it that we've seen. So when we look at surveillance on a national scale that's done in America, a lot of people will first point to the Patriot Act that was signed in 2001 after the 9-11 attacks and the anthrax attacks. So this had a sunset period in 2005 but it was extended all the way out to 2015, extended again to 2019, and the current administration signed and has extended it again. So we see that surveillance has continued. However, in 2015, provisions were put in to stop the NSA from wiretapping phones and individual houses without warrants. So we did see a lot of the big detriments coming from the Patriot Act of people feeling uncomfortable with that, at least as far as we know, go away. So we are told now that we don't have wiretaps in our homes or in our phones. So does that, knowing that, that maybe the government isn't as involved in surveillance on you personally, does that dissuade that feeling of being uncomfortable or is the possibility that they could be watching because they have been watching, is that still there? I think the, yeah, it's just the uncertainty of how much you trust the government, I guess that's what it comes down to. I guess, I feel like even in terms, as you said before, surveillance can also extend to tracking your internet history research, which is, as Joseph mentioned, advertisements used to cater to your being. I mean, it's also that kind of tracking as well, which is what makes me more concerned because there's really no laws, there's really no laws that protect that yet. Of course, listening to, as you said before, wiretapping, that's been said and handled, but in terms of tracking internet history, but yeah, as you said, more than just what you say and yeah, more than just what you say and what you see is being tracked. So that's also what scares me too. Sure, and now Ben, you talked about there being a difference between government surveillance, so like those signed in by the Patriot Act and by the United States Freedom Act, there's also corporate surveillance. So every time you make transactions and are active on platforms such as Facebook, they are watching that. So they have the right as a corporation to keep that data. So all those terms and conditions that no one ever reads in there, you're signing away your right to privacy. Is that something that we as a society should be worried about? Do you think that the amount that corporations can look at our data and can analyze that data? Is that something that we should be worried about or is it a necessary evil, so to speak, as a cost of using these platforms? I think there's two parts to it. So I personally think that as long as the companies are being honest about what they're doing, it's on the consumer to choose whether or not they want to use that product. To me, it's not rational for people to say, I think my iPhone's spying on me, but I'm still gonna buy the iPhone X or whatever. It's like, if you have an issue, then you can simply choose to not buy that product. And then if people start buying rival products, which are not doing that, then problem solved. I think the free market kind of works out there. But I think the problem you encounter is when companies are lying about what they're doing. For instance, the whole Facebook thing, where Mark Zuckerberg or his company was selling data to Cambridge Analytica and then basically saying he wasn't doing that at first. I think that's extremely problematic because then, even though people think that might not be happening, it actually is happening, in which case people are not capable of making that choice to switch to a different product. So I personally think that as long as companies are just being honest about what's happening, they have a right to do whatever they want with your data. And I think a lot of consumers would end up choosing to buy alternative products, and I think they would totally have the right to do that. But that's just a thing that consumers have to choose, knowing all the risks. Yeah, and now, just momentarily, I'd like to transition back to talking about government surveillance, because I think you said something interesting earlier, Ben, and that was around the point of, we don't know how effective exactly the Patriot Act was or how effective the surveillance that the United States is carrying out was because while we can point to maybe crimes or terrorist attacks that happen, it's a lot harder for us to point towards ones that didn't happen because of surveillance. So, and we've seen this for all throughout history, in World War II, the United States interned Japanese people on a massive level, citing national security, just as we did wiretaps and home taps, citing national security after the 2001 attacks. Now, in World War II, there wasn't a single incidence of Japanese terrorism in America. Now, many people point to this as saying that the internment was going far, far too far, much overboard, a position that personally I take, I say it was too much, but then maybe others would argue that we don't know how many terrorist attacks that could have prevented. So, is there a world in which our surveillance, you know, we can't tell just how much safer we are because of surveillance, because we're not seeing the attacks that could have happened? I think that depends on the way in which it's being done. Like you brought up the example of like Japanese internment, there's really not too much logic to the idea that simply because a person is of Japanese origin, they have a high probability of wanting to like blow up an American ship or spy for Japan or whatever. Like that's just not really something that makes a whole lot of logical sense. So I think in a case like that, it's really not justified. Now, if we're doing surveillance on people who type into Google how to commit a terrorist attack and then types in like, when are there no police officers at X location? Like that, at that point you have a certain degree of probable cause that makes me like more comfortable with surveillance happening. So to me it really depends on how much reason there is to believe that the person they're investigating is actually a likely threat to the United States as a whole because this blanket like idea of just worrying a wire to everybody's phones or like we can do it for like basically whatever reason we want, that doesn't make sense because most people are not going to be trying to commit terrorist attacks. Sure, well I think we've covered a lot of really interesting ground today on the trade-off that we as a society are forced to make between privacy and security. You know, you can never have completely one or the other and I think that with this issue as in many other issues we face trade-offs. That's, it's a given and it's something that we have to deal with and it's going to be a question that doesn't end with just the continuation of the surveillance in 2015 and 2019 but it's going to be something that our nation continues to deal with and I think that that's like how we end so many segments on this show, it's something that is a question for future legislators and future policy makers to ask themselves so what trade-offs is our nation going to make in the future? Thank you. I've been your host, Cedric Hughes and this has been Teens on Topic.