Wednesday, January 29, 2020

A study of citizenship and its relation to surveillance and privacy Essay Example for Free

A study of citizenship and its relation to surveillance and privacy Essay Citizenship as Surveillance   Ã¢â‚¬Å"When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, thats a violation of basic human rights†- Jimmy Carter. Often taken for granted, citizenship is something that we know superficially what it is, but never think too deeply about. But every single day, for millions of people, citizenship is something to be worried about, something that others use to rise above the rest. Based on personal experiences as well as extensive research, this essay will discuss not only what citizenship at its core is, but also its uses as surveillance and how it impacts everyday life. I will be drawing primarily from concepts detailed by three scholars in the area of surveillance- David Lyon, Steven Nock, and Michel Foucault, with some material from John Torpey. From Lyon, I will be referencing the ideas of social sorting and data flow; from Nock, I will be referencing the idea of credentials; from Foucault, I will be referencing the idea of disciplinary power. Furthermore, I will be looking at the impact of these concepts from each scholar onto the issues of social exclusion and discrimination. Through such an analysis, I will detail the net benefits and harms of citizenship as it pertains to surveillance and the everyday person. What is citizenship? Webster’s Dictionary simply defines it as â€Å"being an inhabitant of a city or town; especially one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman†. But of course, this is an incredibly superficial definition. At it’s core, according to John Torpey, citizenship is a way for states â€Å"to deprive people of the freedom to move across certain spaces and to render them dependent on states and the state system for the authorization to do so an authority widely held in private hands theretofore†. While citizenship, at first glance, simply seems to be just another way to distinguish between nationals of one state opposed to nationals of another, its use for governments goes far greater than that. The creation of passports and other such devices has led citizenship to not only be simply documentation, but also a method of control and surveillance. As Torpey furthers, â€Å"A critical aspect of this process has been that people have a lso become dependent on states for the possession of an identity from which they can escape only with difficulty and which may significantly shape their access to various spaces†. While originally just a way for states to determine borders and other logistics, citizenship over the years has evolved greatly. From passports and Social Security numbers to crime databases and border patrol checks, the methods by which governments restrict and control our movements are growing. However, the question remains: How do states use citizenship to surveil its citizens? The primary way governments surveil its citizens through citizenship is the creation of passports. Passports allow for entry into the issuing country and are accepted as valid identification for international border crossings. Because passports are used as identification, they contain information such as name, date of birth, and biometrics. However, past simple identification, passports also serve as a means of surveillance is by providing identification/classification as well as tracking/restricting movement. As Torpey states, â€Å"states have sought to monopolize the capacity to authorize the movements of persons and unambiguously to establish their identities in order to enforce this authority†. As detailed before, the ultimate goal of citizenship is to restrict and control the movements of persons. The role passports play in this is by establishing the identity of such persons in order to better restrict them. Passports act as a credential, which, as Steven Nock writes, is â€Å"a way to create reputation among strangers, or â€Å"A minimum basis for trust in the absence of personal knowledge†. He further, saying that credentials are necessary to the extent that we must trust people we don’t know. In this case, passports act as a simple way for law enforcement to ensure criminals are not moving about freely. As such, checking passports at border crossing or flights not only establish identity, but also trust. The way passports do this is through data flow. As defined by David Lyon, data flow is the transferring of information collected by one surveillance technology to another. In the case of passports, most, if not all, have an embedded chip that allows police, border patrol agents, and the like to simply swipe a passport to pull up all of a citizen’s history. Most notably, this chip contains data from the TECS (Treasury Enforcement Communications Systems) which allows different law agencies to exchange criminal information with each other. That means that your entire criminal record, whether it be with the Border Patrol, the FBI, or even the local police, can be found with just a swipe of your passport. But even more so, this data is then used for social sorting. Social sorting, as defined by David Lyon, is â€Å"the social practice of surveillance and control to sort out, filter and serialize who needs to be controlled and who is free of that control†. At face value, this seems to be a good thing. After all, ensuring criminals are walking around free sounds like a good deal for a small invasion of privacy. However, the issue comes with the use of social sorting today. As Lyon states, â€Å"the new penology is concerned with techniques for identifying, managing and classifying groups sorted by levels of dangerousness. Rather than using evidence of criminal behaviour, newer approaches intervene on the basis of risk assessment†. Instead of allowing or denying movement based on tangible criminal behavior, the use of such data has moved towards prediction of criminal behavior. As such, social sorting in the case of citizenship has progressed past simply who is a criminal versus who is not a criminal and instead sorts people based on who is likely to become a criminal. The impact of this to everyday life is great. One specific way is through the idea of disciplinary power, which is, as Foucault defines it, the idea that â€Å"Discipline is a mechanism of power which regulates the behaviour of individuals in the social body.† This simply means that the use of surveillance allows institutions to use discipline to enforce specific behaviors within people. In the case of citizenship, this disciplinary power exists in two ways. Firstly, it exists from the government. A historical example of such is the case of the Soviet Union and Soviet passports. In this case, the Soviet Union issued passports based on who supported the Soviet ideology. Those who were completely indoctrinated were allowed to travel freely; however, those who did not support the Soviet ideology were effectively restricted to poor areas. As such, the Soviet Union used disciplinary power (restricting movement based on ideology) in order to promote a specific behavior (supporting t he Soviet ideology). In this case, it’s directly from the government itself. However, the second way disciplinary power exists in citizenship is through the deinstitutionalization of disciplinary power, as offered by William Staples. Instead of the government itself directly enforcing specific behavior, this type of disciplinary power relies on other citizens to promote citizenship. And indeed, this concept is prevalent even today, with prejudices against the â€Å"foreigners† and the â€Å"illegals†. This kind of social exclusion and discrimination promote the idea of citizenship if only to escape the attacks of others. Talking to my parents, who immigrated to the United States from China, I found it interesting and slightly disheartening to hear their experiences. They way people treat citizens and noncitizens if very different. Because my parents didn’t speak very much English, communication was an issue and it was difficult getting jobs. There was a certain amount of prejudice against immigrants and not being a citizen incurs a certai n amount of suspicion. After all, citizenship is seen as a â€Å"patriotic duty†, and not engaging in such a process can be perceived as not embracing the American culture. While the difference in attitude wasn’t immediate and polarizing, there was a lot more acceptance when my parents became citizens. The attitude of those around them became more akin to that of a community rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. As such, from this experience, I found it clear the impact that disciplinary power had upon citizenship and social exclusion and discrimination. There’s a certain â€Å"us versus them† mentality, and the stigma associated with not being a citizen is great. As such, it’s clear the impact citizenship has on everyday life. Although it may seem innocuous, the role citizenship plays in surveillance is great. With the use of credentials and data flow, citizenship ultimately results in issues such as social sorting and disciplinary power. What then results is a great amount of social exclusion and discrimination based solely on the characteristics of citizenship. From immigration to criminal activity, everyone is subject to judgement and the increasing pervasion of privacy only exacerbates these impacts. While there does need to be a certain amount of credibility associated with each person, the overreach of states through surveillance will only result in increased tension and stratification.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Euthenasia In Australia :: essays research papers fc

Euthanasia   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Sometimes, life can deteriorate to the point where a person loses their dignity and self-respect, and are unable to communicate; life like this is longer worth living, as the most enjoyable of things are no-longer enjoyable. Euthanasia could, in my opinion, be practiced when a person reaches this point, and then only passively. If the person in question is able to communicate rationally, then their opinion must be asked first.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Assisted death, other than passively should most definitely remain illegal, and in the Northern Territory, it should be made illegal. The nation of Australia must be uniformed, or else people simply go to another state, where the law different.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   People should live their lives for as long as it is worth living, as defined above. Some people wish to use euthanasia to die when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness, and given a certain amount of time to live. These people still have those six months, or whatever. If they can, they should enjoy that time, doing all the things they like to do. If they wanted, they could go out and spend all their savings, or retirement money on things that â€Å"I always wanted to get one†, or make themselves feel good by donating to charities. They should not look at the amount of time they don’t have, but instead, at the time they have left. And besides, we all know we are going to die, these people are no different, except they know exactly how much time is left. It has been said that trials and pain make us stronger. Even if someone is in pain, that pain could make them mentally stronger than if they give up and take the easy way out. Life is full of pai n, and joy, everyone goes through both things in their lives, because that is what life is.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some say that doctor-aided death is widespread already, only covertly, and that the Netherlands is a model of how to establish the right to die by bringing the practice out in the open, where the medical and legal system can oversee it. This issue is similar to how abortion was seen before it was legalized. The main reason for legalization of abortion was because it was being done anyway. People had access to abortion, it was just being done terribly. We're in exactly the same situation today: People have access to assisted suicide; it's just being done so badly.

Monday, January 13, 2020

Disability Discrimination In The Work Force

Disability refers to the state in which a person may be physically or even mentally impaired. Impairment may limit a person from performing certain tasks. Disability may either be in form of a terminal disease or physical like the inability to use some parts of the body. People with disability have for quite some time been sidelined especially in the carrying out of public duties. Discrimination has especially been rampant in the working areas and in job markets. There has been believe that physically or mentally challenged persons are unable to perform tasks like the other persons. Another form of discrimination is the racial discrimination.Person subjected to this kind are often thought inferior to their counterparts. This may subject them to rejection in job markets regardless of their qualifications. Despite the many laws relating to the rights of the disabled persons, employment rate is still high rated as current estimates have discovered. The issue of discrimination has raised concern especially with organizations which protects and fights for the disabled human rights. It has been found out that many physically challenged individuals have the capability to perform similar jobs with other persons. They also compete fairly in the job areas.There is thus need to create favorable environment for such individuals. Challenges faced by the disabled persons at work places A study conducted in March 2008 by David Grinberg on job discrimination showed an increase of 9% in a span of five years. Out of this, 14% were disability related discrimination. Job places have been identified as areas where physically and mentally challenged persons are highly discriminated. To begin with, to get a job for these people takes much longer than for their counterparts. Employers are usually prejudiced and end up turning off disabled persons even when they qualify for the jobs.This has led to high levels of unemployment for the disabled persons, (Grinberg & Nazer para. 2). Potent ial employers also site the lack of facilities to accommodate them. They argue that the cost of accommodating them is high which may only mean additional cost to the businesses. They are afraid that the disabled persons may not perform as expected which may lead to a decrease in their output thus profitability. Also most building has not been constructed in a way to accommodate especially the physically challenged persons. This poses a major obstacle even to the potential employers (Grinberg & Nazer para.3).In the jobs however, the situations are not much different for the disabled. They suffer discrimination from they colleagues at work and even sometimes from their employers. This is usually notable by the exclusion they face from the social cliques of other employees. They are also looked down upon and the environment is usually not so conducive for them. They also tend to be segregated from the major activities in their work places. This has led to high turnover for the disabled and even worse a low morale in their work. Promotion for the disabled also comes in hardy in the job areas.Though they perform fairly the same with their counterparts, or even sometimes better as research has discovered, their labor is barely recognized by their employers (Barnes, et al pp. 27). Harassment in job areas for the disabled is also high. For a long time, the disabled have been equaled to beggars. Some employees feel that they are helping the disabled and it’s not really for job purposes. They thus end up threatening them with dismissal with others demanding for special offers from these kind of employees. Harassment has also been seen in the area of granting leaves and in termination.Most disabled persons are rarely granted family leaves and when they do; their allowances are scrapped off (Australian Public Service Commission para. 3). This has led to a cry of justice in the recent past with people calling for enactment of laws to protect the disabled. Ignorance of the rights of the disabled has also led to an increase in harassment behavior in the job areas. The disabled persons are unaware of the set rules which protect them from these practices. Other forms of harassment may include comment or actions aimed at demeaning their subject or conduct meant to intimidate its target person (Barnes, et al pp.34). Sexual harassment on disabled person at work places has also been reported. Employers take advantage of especially the mentally challenged persons to exploit them. This has challenge has been camouflaged by the lack of well coordinated government and welfare associations. The aggrieved parties thus do not know the right channels to use to seek for assistance (Barnes, et al pp. 43). Most mentally disabled person face challenges in the work place because unlike their counterparts, they tend to be slower. The organizations have not set up enabling environment to accommodate them.This has in turn lead to criticism and accuses of laziness. Su ch persons are demoralized as they are led to believe do not measure up to others. Physically challenged individual also find it hard in areas where they are restricted due to their disabilities (Australian Public Service Commission para. 4, 5). Most offices for example have no places for wheeling the wheel chairs making it impossible for these persons. Others affected by office arrangements are the blind. Many organizations lack facilities for them and if they do, they are rarely updated. This makes the disabled to lag behind in matters of technology and information.Most disabled person also requires adjustments in their working hours. This however is not provided in the job places thus posing a major block to this people. There are also few job varieties available for the disabled persons. This leads to high potential of them being under-utilized. This jobs are most often low paying and with low prospect of promotion (Australian Public Service Commission para. 8). Apart from job r elated areas, the disabled are better talented in other areas than their counterparts. However, this potential is always not recognized as they are not included in the organizations out of office activities.Also, whereas the management offers training to the other employees, this is not so with mostly the mentally and visual challenged employees. The management sites high costs for such training thus rendering these employees unproductive and inefficient. For the physically impaired employees, no arrangement is done for them to attend job related seminars. This diminishes their chances of promotions (Daniel pp. 4). Disabled persons also face problems of low esteem at work places. This is because they are led to believe that they are less endowed than their counterparts.This in turn may lead to poor performance which ultimately leads to dismissals. Interpersonal relation between the disabled and the rest is characterized by prejudices from both sides. This leads to formation of unhea lthy social classes thus tension at work places. Many laws have so far been passed regarding the plight of the disabled. The public seem to be ignorant of them; this calls for public awareness and education on how to handle people with disabilities. However, the physically, mentally and visually challenged persons have a role to play to ensure that these practices are done away with in working places (Daniel pp.7).Disability should not be a reason to make one look down his abilities or even allow other to do so. They should work to ensure that all the prejudices surrounding them due to disability are eliminated (Taylor pp. 12, 13). They should also learn to fight for their rights at job places. Disability rights should be well explained to the employers as well as other employees to ensure that such conflict does not arise in job areas. Conclusion The government should ensure that they set up agencies to look into the plight of the disabled persons.These people should also be synthe sized on these matters and encouraged to seek legal actions against a person violating their rights. The employment laws should also be revised to ensure the correct working environment is created and the necessary adjustments are made to accommodate the challenged persons. Employment agencies should also be set up to help link the disabled persons with potential employers. Managers should also be given funding and other support necessary so as to reduce the costs associated with employing the disabled persons (Taylor pp.17).Lack of proper and up to date information to the disabled persons has also been noted as a major drawback at the work areas. The government should ensure that these people are taught relevant and current affairs so as to be competitive enough at their work areas. Organizations should also set measure to ensure that all the employees are well represented in all educational issues. This would help raise the morale of the disabled persons and as well help improve t he inter-relations among all employees.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Analysis Of The Poem O Captain ! My Captain By Walt...

Many Leaders lack the ability to move people. Mourning the death of a leader is an even bigger task to take on. Abraham Lincoln, in this case was an exception. In the famous poem, â€Å"O Captain! My Captain!† Written by, Walt Whitman in the year 1865. The poem, refers to a terrible event in American history; the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Instead of the country celebrating and rejoicing over the ending of the Civil War and being happy over the country being kept whole, everyone was mourning in the loss of their leader. Aboard a ship, the poem is about a fellow sailor grieving from the loss of his captain. The sailor in the poem is singing a song that praises his captain for leading them safely on their voyage and leading them back home. As the other sailors are celebrating their homecoming with everyone on shore, the sailor notices the captain. He is dead, lying on the deck of the ship â€Å"fallen cold and dead†(line 8). The sailor goes on and mourn fully walks on the deck where the captain had died while the people on shore are unaware of their fallen leader. â€Å" Rise up and hear the bells;†(Line 9). The sailor says wishing his captain could witness the excitement. Everyone adored the captain and admitted that his death feels like a terrible dream, â€Å" It is some dream that on the deck, you’ve fallen cold and dead.† (Lines 15-16). Then in the final stanza of the poem, the sailor puts together his feelings of mourning and pride. (Whitman) The end of the Civil WarShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Poem O Captain My Captain By Walt Whitman1337 Words   |  6 Pagestoday. To begin analyzing this poem we must first look at the context of when the poem was written. This poem, â€Å"O Captain, My Captain† was written by Walt Whitman in 1865 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This death of the beloved president left the entire country devastated. Walt Whitman was a very strong admirer of Abraham Lincoln and often saw him as a fatherly figure in his life. Whitman writes many times in his poem yelling â€Å"father† (Whitman 13). Whitman truly believed that Lincoln hadRead MorePoem Analysis: O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman Essays568 Words   |  3 PagesThe poem basically tells a story about the death of the captain of a ship men crew. The speaker of the poem is a sailor of the ship crew. He grieves mournfully about the death of his respectfully captain. Gloomy and dreary atmospheres are vividly sensed throughout the poem as the speaker lamenting the captain’s death. The poem begins with the speaker calling out his captain that they have finally made it home after their â€Å"fearful trip†. The boat is in sight of land and the people in the shore watchRead MoreComparison of Whitman and Dickenson Poems856 Words   |  4 Pagesperiod, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman created similar poetry. Dickinson s Hope is a Thing with Feathers and Whitman s O Captain! My Captain! share many qualities. br brHope is a Thing with Feathers and O Captain! My Captain! contain a similar scansion. Both have a predominantly iambic meter. TheRead More Whitmans O Captain! My Captain! And Dickinsons Hope is a Thing with Feathers860 Words   |  4 PagesWhitmans O Captain! My Captain! And Dickinsons Hope is a Thing with Feathers America experienced profound changes during the mid 1800’s. New technologies and ideas helped the nation grow, while the Civil War ripped the nation apart. During this tumultuous period, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman createdRead MoreCharacterization in the Film Dead Poets Society649 Words   |  3 Pagesboy named Neil and his six acquaintances. They all go to a boarding school, which is rigorous and conservative, called Welton academy. In this analysis I will discuss first and foremost the characterization in the film. John Keating is the new charismatic poetry teacher with unconventional teaching methods he is later referred to as O captain, my captain. He also is an unconventional and inspirational leader who has a lot of influence over the boys and their lives. He puts the term carpe diem in