Individual Privacy vs. National Security Research Paper

Individual Privacy vs. National Security - Research Paper Example The importance of individual privacy vs. national security has attracted the interest of researchers from various academic fields. This is a broad research topic that requires to be narrowed down for it to become a manageable research topic (Sole, 2010). Narrowing down the topic to a manageable level was carried out in the first phase of the project. The second phase of the research involved discovering or finding relevant sources of information for the research topic. By an analysis of the research problem, the scope of the research project was established. The analysis of the problem established that the recent terrorist threats have contributed to the debate of personal privacy vs. national security. These findings led to the claim that national security could only be realized with limited flow of information. The research project aimed at establishing whether the proposed antiterrorism measures will compromise individual privacy. This paper therefore, analyzes how enhancing natio nal security has compromised individual privacy. The paper follows directly from the previous work on individual privacy vs. national security. Fighting terrorists are the responsibility of the federal government; however, the government has responsibilities towards its people. For the government to achieve an appropriate balance between the two responsibilities, it needs to consider their long-term implications. The federal government also needs to establish which issue is of considerable importance to the country. The assessment phase of the project proved that invasion of people’s privacy concerned the people more than issue of national security. This did not imply that people were ignorant on the security concerns in the country and about the recent terrorist threats. People have direct interests in individual privacy as compared to their interest on matters of national security. Unlike matters of national security, invasion of personal privacy has direct impacts on the p eople. During the assessment phase of the research project, it was established that the federal government considered national security more valuable than people’s privacy. This implies that the government lacked concerns over long-term implication of invading personal privacy in expense of fighting terrorism. According to the openness, privacy, and national security debate bulletin, the government needs to reconsider its actions (Hardin, 2003). It was established that the government took extreme measures to fight terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The government, therefore, needed to reconsider its actions by enhancing people’s privacy despite the immediate needs to fight terrorism. This is because the measures taken by the government to fights terrorism had more negativity and less positive impacts. The measure taken by the government was also unrealistic since terrorism cannot be eliminated overnight. The people are more beneficial to the country than n ational security. This is because national security is meant to improve people’s livelihood and, therefore the government should enhance national security according to the interests of the people. Personal privacy is of interest to the people and, therefore invasion of personal privacy should be of interest to the federal government. The American government has a duty to the people as well as the country. The government also has international objectives that the country must achieve. The position