Governments Involvement Of Government Security - 1519 Words

In this day and age the internet has become a big part of our lives. The internet is now a medium that connects millions of different people across the world in the matter of seconds. However, the vast sea of communication and information that comes along with the internet is not a safe place. More and more often we hear of a security breach within a major company or leaked information, from hackers. Many people are questioning whether or not the government should get involved and regulate the internet. However, people don’t realize that the government’s involvement might infringe on our constitutional rights by censorship of information, invading privacy and the possibility of suppressing our freedom of speech People in the United States†¦show more content†¦Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Those are the words of the first amendment in our constitution and the law the government must follow. U.S civilians run the risk of losing many rights with government regulating the internet. For example privacy, many government requests has been sent to Google for information on their consumers. In the Google transparency report, a U.S. law enforcement agency asked Google to take down a blog that allegedly defamed a law enforcement official in a personal capacity. The company denied that request. Another separate and different law enforcement group asked Google to take down one thousand four hundred videos on YouTube (Google owns YouTube) because of alleged harassment. Dorothy Chou, a Google analyst states, It s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect, Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.† The company did not oblige either of those demands but as the report states, they did fulfil at least with forty- two percent of the removal requests from the United States in 2011. That number compared to the past reports is very low; in 2010, for example, Google said it complied with eighty-seven percent of U.S. requests to take down content. In 2011, Google received six thousand three hundred and twenty one requests for