Are you willing to give up your Rights for Safety?
Today the
Government violates our civil rights using unethical means, but many say it’s
fine as long as it’s safer for the greater good. It is also said that it deters
and reduces crimes but I have to disagree and say the means being used for our
safety is unethical and violates civil rights, and not all people are okay with
that. We saw a movie in class last week called “Minority Report”, and in that movie its many years in to the future
and criminals were arrested before the crime was ever committed. I live in NYC
and its fine for the cops to stop and interrogate people on the streets and
that’s called stop and frisk, because they have a probable cause and that
probable cause is “suspicion”. What about airport security now, it’s fine for
them to search anybody in a room and even strip search individuals that they
feel may be a threat or terrorist. We find our civil liberties endangered by
the very government whose job it is to protect them, and our civil liberties should
not be taken by claiming that the threat is worth it.
Stop and frisk is
a big dilemma in NYC because not only is it unethical due to racial profiling,
but it goes against our civil rights, but fine as long as there is probable
cause. Today the minority groups that include the blacks, Latinos/Hispanics who
have to deal with the stop and frisks due to racial profiling and
discrimination are mostly the ones being stopped and frisked. CHAPPELL, KEVIN
in his article in the sixth paragraph stated “Black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 account for 4.7
percent of the city's population; however, they made up 41.6 percent of
stop-and-frisks”. These racial profiling’s can cause the minority groups to
fear cops and lose respect toward the law. The loss of
respect will cause a rise in criminality also those who fear the cops will tend
to not call the cops and those crimes won’t get reported. Crimes that don’t get
reported result in a statistical error formed by the (UCR) Uniform Crime
Report, an FBI program since 1929 that collects information on crimes reported
to law enforcement. If reports aren’t made government will budget cut the
police departments in the area causing police officers to be fired and a
decrease in officers can really cause crime to rise.
With government
invading our privacy first with unwarranted searches of our property, and now
with unwarranted searches of our person violates our fourth amendment which is
protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. Airport security is using
unethical means on how they use full body scans to reduce strip search but
these full body scans are also intruding people’s privacy on a new level. The
full body scan was controversial because the images taken are close to a naked
image, even though many say its fine as long as it makes it safer to ride,
where’s the privacy we all supposedly hold. Then there’s Security officers that
do “random” searches when choosing individuals for these scans but in all
reality they look for a specific group that are categorized as terrorist like
Arabs, and Muslims for example. On Christmas of 2009 there was the underwear
bomber incident where a Nigerian man sowed a bomb to his underwear. From the
online news article by “Daily Mail Reporter” “agents admitted that Abdulmutallab did not look like a terrorist”,
and if it wasn’t for the failed explosive it would have been a tragic Christmas
for many. I believe Security officers should be taught to have an open mind
when looking for a suspicious person and not the way a terrorist is stereotyped
to look like. It is more likely officers will single out the wrong passengers
than the actual threats.
In the movie “Minority Report” it is about 50 years
into the future and there is a system called pre-crime. This system is made up
3 physics called “precogs” that tells the future of those who are going to commit
murder or suicide. This may seem like a good future but all civil rights were
taken from the people as they were convicted before he/she knew they were on
trial, and are not allowed a defense, now that would be against the sixth
amendment which is the right to counsel and a fair trial. Not only that but
when the pre-crime officers were looking for a convicted criminal they would
send these robotic spiders that would enter into anyone’s apartment to scan
their eye and you had to let them. If this kind of future was possible I would
not want to be a part of it because those in control of such power would abuse
it such as Lamar Burgess did so in the movie, maybe not like Lamar but slowly
taking away civil rights to ensure the safety of all.
To say the least
I’m not with the whole safety talk and having to let them intrude on some
simple liberties we supposedly have. Next thing you know we would be living a
similar future like in Minority Report and the Minority’s now will lose their
voice and I am a part of the Latino minority group today. There could be better
ways to ensure safety but also ensure the rights of the people because at this
rate we could ultimately be handing our freedom over to the government. It just
takes one bad incident for the government to come in and promise a safer
environment but we would have to give something up for that better safer life.
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