When is government use of spyware justified?

Telephone calls can be tapped, mobile phones traced, e-mails can be read and even one’s keystrokes on a PC can be monitored, as is often the case when criminal justice is involved. Human rights activists debate the fact that the government’s use of Spyware is excessive and goes against the right to privacy. Given the tragic events of 9-11, is this ‘Big Brother’ approach of modern government justified or have governments become excessive in their surveillance?

The introduction of newer privacy laws would further inhibit the government’s ability to employ such measures of surveillance . The primary weakness of this solution is that the government makes these laws and that so far whatever law has been made to obstruct their advance has either been gone around or ignored . But then again, newer laws, if correctly phrased could prevent a great deal more of spying and could potentially bring about the end of spyware use. Yet this also seems a bit far-fetched.

Recent accusations concerning the employ of this type of software to spy on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have been made in Britain. Clare Short, the former British government minister was accused of leaking this confidential information to the press .

The US Pentagon’s Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, an invention of the Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), endeavours to identify and track down terrorists and was closed in September 2003 because Congress believed the government was given too much liberty in monitoring its citizens and checking personal information . It was feared that such power had Orwellian implications.

Not all government spying is done with intricate Spyware programs though. They also have access to vast databases where they can find anything related to a specific topic- this technique is known as datamining.

Solutions to problems arising from the issue

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