Nowadays, the use of phones and smart devices is part of our daily live. Many claim that authorities should be able to monitor calls and messages done by citizens for security aspects. Others think that shuch data should remain private to each individual and must not be accessed without concent.
One the one hand, emerging technologies opens the door to new forms of crime. Due to its nature, it is quasi impossible to be detected by the corresponding authority. For this reason, having access to people’s cellphone records could be benefitial for the police. With this information police could have furthers clues to detect crimes commited in the digital world. For example, the most common form of crime using new technologies is the scam. Currently, it is impossible to follow the criminal’s trace. However, this information could help to narrow down the circle of suspects and prevent future unlawful activities.
On the other hand, individual privacy is a human right that should not be violated by anyone, even if it is for society’s safety. Everyone should be entiteled to have its own prive life, which involves digital data like call and message records stored by smarphones. Besides, this information in the wrong hands, could be used as a tool for social control. For instance, a group o people that do not follow the same polical stream as the government, could be easily identified and erradicated.
In conclusion, the dispute of authorities having access to data stored in personal cell phones is not easy to solve. Overall, individual privacy is in one stake, whereas society’s safety is at the other side. However, my strong opinion is that these days people’s privacy is at high risk, thus, no more individual data should be shared even if its to the current authority.