If we think back to a hundred years from now, police officers, FBI, and the like had to use manual means of tracking down criminals in order to arrest and prosecute them. There were no computers that they could use in order to see what sort of information the criminal was researching before committing a crime that they could use as substantial evidence to prove that a crime was pre-meditated. There were no tracking devices connected to the criminal’s leg in order to inform the police whether he was outside of the area of probationary confinement. There were no cell phones they could tap in order to track the exact latitude and longitude of the criminal. Everything was manual. If they didn’t find the criminal, and they happened to flee the country, hope could be lost in terms of ever finding that criminal.
Times have changed though. Not only are the government and the police monitoring criminals and non-criminals alike with technological devices to track their positions in the world and tap into cell phones, parents have no begun to use devices such as My Mobile Watchdog and Mobile Spy to monitor their children’s communication through their cell phones. These programs are being used to avoid sexual predators, track sexual predators, and to keep kids from communicating thoughts that their parents would not approve of being communicated.
It is unfair when we live in a world where our communication is monitored to such a degree that we have to not only make sure that what we are texting is not going to tip off the government, but make sure that it is not going to get us grounded. The Patriot Act was a movement in itself that took away our right to privacy within our own homes, when the government would have the right to listen to our phone calls and read our emails so as to “defend against terrorists.” But now, our parents can do the same so as to defend against doing anything they disagree with?
Technology may be moving us forward in the world, where we can achieve so much more than was ever imaginable because we can travel faster than before, communicate with people across the world in an instant, go to outer space; at the same time though, it is taking away our agency in being independent, free and self-determining individuals when we are going back to a time where we are dependent on the technology we have–we not only need it to survive, but use to to limit ourselves in seemingly barbaric ways.
Shana's Blog 