Examine the shifting values of civil liberties in the new millennium Research Paper

Examine the shifting values of civil liberties in the new millennium that has seen greater public tolerance of government surveillance and record-keeping - Research Paper Example There have been several events that have triggered the re-evaluation of the way civil privacy protection is balanced with police surveillance. During the period that has passed after the terrorist attack of 9/11, there have been diverse changes being implemented in the technological advances; federal law and the interpretation of privacy safeguards by the courts have created an expansion in the ways through which the police may facilitate surveillance of different civil activities or in the ways through which they can frisk citizens in public places for any particular reason. The rationale of this article is to scrutinize the different factors that may promote the escalation of police surveillance with regards to the type of effects that police surveillance has on civil life and privacy rights while also drawing conclusions on newspaper reports on the situations whereby issues have been raised in regards to stop-and-frisk policy. (http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles4 (3) /escalating.pdf‎) The way people view privacy and surveillance have been dramatically altered over the years and the change has been more evident in the balance between individual privacy rights and police surveillance authority. A significant section of the American public attributes the change to the 9/11 event to have catalyzed the search authority that has been related to the police surveillance. Surveillance has been modified and made quite inclusive of elements that were not previously connected to threat warnings, and with the advances made in the technology platform, a thin line has to be drawn as to what is acceptable by law and what should be considered as interference with the rights of an individual. Any form of threat to the safety of the American public has been defined in the constitution with the recommendations on the specific ways through which these issues of threat to national security have to be handled