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The fact that the government could have hired a stranger to look at the most unimportant and insignificant parts of our lives and examine them would give us the chills. Would you voluntarily give some stranger on the street your email password? You have a right to have some control over where the information in your life reaches, and governments reading your texts, emails and other forms of private electronic communication is a violation of your rights.
Evidence obtained by them through data mining or surveillance on electronic devices used by you would be a breach of your privacy. But your right to privacy cannot be used as a cover up for crimes. So the government would be entitled to place national security above your privacy, but this argument by the government cannot be used if its effectiveness cannot be proven.
Data mining conducted by the NSA has been long considered controversial. Despite the well-known argument of having nothing to hide, there is more than “hiding” involved when civilians do not wish for their governments to have access to their data. The thought of a stranger having access to every precise detail in your life is scary because we fear what will happen and how this data can be used against us. What if this data fell into the wrong hands, jeopardising our already fragile security? The civilians are the ones who sand the most to lose with this practice of data mining, and governments who still proceed with data mining, have much to reconsider, and whether their primary job as a “government” is being done.
