Freedom, Privacy or Protection
Compared to the non-technological age, current governments now have more access to information more than ever in the course of humankind. Since the 9/11 attacks on American soil, the need and access to personal information have played a critical role in preventing further incidents in the country, especially from foreign parties. However, there are levels to which government agencies in charge of collecting this critical information are allowed to exercise their autonomous right, which mainly requires individuals to be engaging in suspicious behaviour. The National Security Agency (NSA) is in charge of surveillance and collection of digital data in the United States of America in order to prevent terrorist attacks and ideologies from spreading and causing harm to American citizens. Edward Joseph Snowden is a former technical consultant in the agency that discovered the vast extent to which the government was breaching their constitutional obligation of upholding people’s privacy. The documentary Citizenfour presents Snowden’s ordeals, ideologies and experiences that clearly demonstrate the relationship between citizens and their government based on the philosophy of social contract by Thomas Hobbes and ideologies by John Locke.
After serving in several capacities in the technological world, Edward Snowden, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NSA, discovered to overstretching efforts by the government to wittingly spy on American citizens. During the creation of the NSA post the 9/11 attacks, the agency was meant to collect data from individuals with suspicious behaviour. But the agency went on to actively intercept phone calls, messages, emails, as well as google searches of each and everyone, not only suspected individuals. Access to such unlimited information also provides the government with an untamed amount of power that could lead to chaos. Snowden believed that the government was bound to get consent from American citizens in order to be under such surveillance. Furthermore, the agency went further to lie to the public by denying the collection of individual data in front of the legislature on the orders from the executive.
The social contract tries to explain the people’s relationship with the state or ruling government. Hobbes was a philosopher during the 17th century that initiated political debates having lived through the brutality of the English civil war. Watching parliamentarians fight royalists raised questions about the structure and function of the government. Through his literature, ‘Leviathan’, Hobbes (5) addresses the state of nature which was existent prior to the formation of governments. It described a state with neither laws nor rulers, creating a state of complete freedom. However, Hobbes’ pessimistic ideas about the state of nature described it as a state of total chaos and needed to be avoided. This was mainly because with neither laws nor rulers, and people were allowed to be as savage as possible, thus, no security, safety or trust and consequently no civilization due to continued brutal violence (Hobbes 106). According to Hobbes, any rational human being tends to be self-interested and may be compelled to move away from the state of nature, creating rulers and governors. However, he did not believe in the divine rule of kings but in the collective decision by other individuals on who to rule them, also known as the social contract.
Based on the social contract, individuals give up their complete freedom in order to live together in peace and stability. This is achieved by creating rules and common laws that all must follow (Hobbes 111). In addition, they hand over power to a person or a group of people to enforce the developed policies, also considered as the sovereign. It gives them unlimited authority to ensure that the social contract is upheld by maintaining peace and stability. Thus, the sovereign cannot be fought or questioned provided their responsibility are fulfilled according to the social contract (Hobbes 118). Unfortunately, since the sovereign prevents people from falling into the state of nature, Hobbes considers that they must remain all-powerful all the time, which is clearly demonstrated by the NSA in the documentary. The agency believed that obtaining all digital data from American citizens kept the country at a vantage point in developing intelligence about terrorist activity, thus, maintaining peace and stability as their end of the bargain.
In two treaties, John Locke also considered human beings starting at the state of nature. He agreed with Hobbes that the state of nature was complete freedom for human beings with the liberty to act and live as one pleases. However, he believed despite complete freedom, and some things were not permissible due to morality as humans are generally bound by natural law (Locke 8). The law basically described the natural rights of life, liberty and property. There is no authority to protect natural rights or judge their violation in the state of nature. Thus, a social contract is created where individuals grant limited power to a government to ensure that these natural rights are preserved. People give up some of their freedom in order for the government to act as the impartial judge that is equal and fair to everyone in the pursuit of liberty and justice for all (Locke 10). However, it is done with the consent of the people who empower the government to even punish wrongdoers, provided the natural rights are safeguarded.
According to Locke (12), the government should not be given unlimited power since it only protects natural rights. In the event that citizens feel like the government fails to fulfil their part of the contract, Locke believed it permissible and necessary for the people to overthrow the leaders (20). Locke’s ideology is clearly seen in Snowden’s whistleblowing actions that demonstrate his dissatisfaction with the authority. Based on the Snowden files, the NSA collected 125 gigabytes of data every second, which translated to terabytes of data in a single day. Consequently, Snowden believed that the government officers were able to develop an individual’s personality based on his digital network, which is a great invasion of privacy. Snowden appears to be a strong believer in liberalism, believing that people could live in any manner they wanted, providing they did not infringe or violate anyone’s natural rights. Hence, he was willing to reveal to the public the actions of the government despite the repercussions and the insistent claims that the surveillance was aimed at protection.
Conclusively, the American government believes in Hobbes’ political ideology while deceiving the citizens to approve of Locke’s social contract. Unlike Locke’s belief in overthrowing dissatisfying leaders out of their position, Hobbes’ social contract allows rulers to have autonomous power provided the natural rights of peace and stability are safeguarded. However, Snowden’s actions are justified as the collection of the sensitive data is a complete invasion of people’s privacy without their consent. It is important for people to live freely without the limitation of their intellectual capacity for fear of future repercussions due to the imposed surveillance system. Snowden effectively demonstrates Luke’s dimension of decision-making power among citizens concerning their preferred policies and subsequent actions.
Works Cited
Hobbes, Thomas, and Marshall Missner. Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy). Routledge, 2016. 5-119.
Locke, John. Locke: Two treatizes of government. Cambridge university press, 1967. 5-20.
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