Surveillance and Accountability

Reading an article in the New York Times called “Surveillance and Accountability” made me think about the issues in Big Brother. The article talks about the Bush administration and their ability to spy on Americans without a warrant.  The article goes on to say, “Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance.” This is an interesting point because most civilians do not like to have their private life under constant watch and would like to sue the government for doing it, but under the ruling of the Supreme Court, they aren’t allowed too. The Justice Department is currently trying to deal with people who have a problem the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which made it legal to wiretap houses without a warrant and gave the telephone companies immunity for allowing the wire tap. This Act also lowered the burden of proof needed for surveillance which means they can pretty much use any type of surveillance that they want on whoever they want, where ever they want, and whenever they want. I do not agree with this at all. I don’t think it is fair that people can because a suspect for no reason. Being Arabic, i am especially against this because I know for a fact we get racially profiled whether people mean to or not. Everytime I go on an airplane, the security guards see my name, my brother’s name(Mazen), or my dad’s name(Iyad), and they have pull one, or all three of us aside for “random” search, but no one else is line is subjected to it. I do believe that surveillance can be a good thing, and can stop a lot of bad things from happening, but there has to a reason behind it, not just a name.