Surveillance

So...does anyone else picture a creepy looking, metal, alien-type creature sorting through emails and websites when we talk about ECHELON or is it just me..? Surveillance has kind of been a creepy topic to learn about and yet it gives me a feeling of reassurance at the same time...now if that isn't an oxymoron I don't know what is! While it is all well and good for us to say that surveillance is an invasion of our privacy and we should have freedom from disturbance, imagine if there had been higher surveillance surrounding the time when the twin towers were attacked or when the London bombings happened in 2005 and these events could have been prevented! I understand that people might feel uncomfortable having their emails, phonecalls and other messages observed, but if terror attacks and massive drug deals can be prevented with a little monitoring then personally I don't mind if someone can see the "tell me all the gossip that's been happening while I've been away" emails that bounce back and forth between my friends and I, or the childish youtube videos that I search repeatedly ("people falling over" is always a favourite...)

As Jake points out, I'm sure that the people monitoring these types of communication have better things to survey than whether 'Greta knows that her ex-boyfriend has being seeing Michelle for a few weeks now and shes not even sorry about it because Adam said that...blah blah blah!'

As the use of technology grows, people are just going to find it harder and harder to divulge information regarding crimes without the use of communications technologies like the internet and cellphones. Already it is rare (for me anyway) that we communicate with people solely by face to face interaction, which even then can be monitored by hidden cameras.

We can run, but we can't hide!