The Dangers Of Being An American Citizen

With the transition of the economy into the waiting hands of the Millennial generation, new questions concerning government involvement in citizens affairs have risen. One of the largest debates, the struggle between treating the internet as a public or private domain of the common citizen, has finally begun to rear its head in modern politics, and with the rising issues and concerns swirling around the topic, more and more citizens are beginning to find themselves pondering the same question: to what extent does the government have a duty to monitor a private citizen’s internet usage? The answer is simple. As long as the United States Government treats a citizen’s personal internet use as a private domain, the government only has a duty to monitor internet usage in the interest of public safety, national security, or personal safety. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution clearly
Pew Research Center has concluded, through polls, that an overwhelming eighty-two percent of people believe that it is acceptable to monitor terrorism suspects’ internet activity. The same set of polls also reveals that seventy-seven percent of Americans believe it acceptable to monitor users who visit child pornography sites. These numbers suggest a majority of American citizens faced with situations showing clear imminent danger or illegal activity are, decidedly, for government internet monitoring. This revelation leads to the one of the most dire questions of the rise of the new generation: to what extent do we as American people allow our own privacy to be violated in order to protect public and national security? The answer to this question is strikingly less simple, and for a majority of the public, fifty seven percent according to Pew Research Center, the idea that the government should monitor ordinary citizen’s internet usage is