There are plenty of positive and negative arguments you can make about surveillance. Most people believe that there are good aspects as well as bad aspects of it and don’t just state that surveillance is all together good or bad. I may be among the lower numbers of people who think that surveillance is, for the most part, not as necessary as society may make it. I think surveillance is a big contributor to making people look bad and being falsely judged based on small pieces of information. When I say falsely judged I am speaking of negative results as well as positive and even neutral results. Society tends to judge a person or thing solely based on the small or large amounts of data recorded about the person.

I can use myself as an example. If you were to Google my name (assuming your searching for the correct Zach Wied) You would probably come to the conclusion that I was a big football star in high school or something. You may even think that I at least played a lot. I was not and I did not. I missed out on my senior year due to injuries I sustained in an accident. But almost all links that Google provides for me are associated with my involvement with my High School football team, and the majority of the links are football related. Now this doesn’t exactly make me look bad, but it misrepresents me.

Misrepresentation is the biggest problem I have with relying on surveillance in order to gain accurate information on somebody or something. One of the biggest issues there are is the practice of surveillance upon people’s social network profiles. I believe that the accessibility of peoples information through photos and other content is leading businesses and corporations to believe that these are the best and most accurate ways of identifying how somebody will contribute to their business’ success. Now, I’m going to make a bold statement here and say that most of our parents indulged in under aged drinking and even experimented with or just as equally indulged in some drugs. And even when they were of legal age they probably got plenty drunk, did silly things, said silly things, maybe even did something illegal or frowned upon by society (even when not inebriated). These are the same people who run our country today. They work hard, support families, and are contributing members of society. Maybe stop and think for a minute to picture our world today if we just had Facebook, or an equivalent to it, when out parents were growing up. Dad may have not have gotten that big job if pictures of him acting crazy while he was drunk were discovered. Mom may not have gotten to into school if the content of her profile was deemed inappropriate and she therefore considered unfit to be a member of that establishment. But we know our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents. They are very qualified to lead prosperous lives and be good workers. If I found out that my uncle tried Cocaine once should I deem him a drug user who is unfit to hold a job on a daily basis? No, because I know who he really is and I know that he is a contributing member of society.

My Mother and Father have been divorced since I was in third grade. My father had always struggled with problems relating to alcohol. It is normal to think that an alcoholic is a no good person and a bum who couldn’t hold a job. My father never missed work. He wakes up early every morning, goes to work, excels in his job and comes home. The man is the hardest working man I know. What he did outside of work may have not been admirable and courageous, but it was his thing. What I’m saying is that people mistakenly search for qualities in others based on things that have nothing to do with how they can handle themselves in a workplace. Just because you can have access to information doesn’t mean it will be effective in helping you learn about somebody. Very few people act the same at work as they do in their own time, and that’s okay. That’s how it has always been and that’s how its supposed to be. Businesses and Corporations lose plenty of good employees based on factors about them that have nothing to do with their success in the workplace. When looking for employees, is it not more intelligent to judge somebody based on what they can do in the workplace? Or is it more important to make sure that what they do on Saturday nights is something you would like too?