Research Paper on:
Government Surveillance

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
family life home and correspondence, and the right to speak freely and acquire information. These are seen by many as the epitome of privacy law. However these rights  are not as clear n cut and with events such as the terrorist attacks in the US on September the 11th 2002, and more recently the bombing of the  Madrid trains in 2004 has indicated the need of information by the authorities. However balancing the need for information and individual rights is a difficult task, as information can only  be gained with surveillance. If terrorists are going to use covert means of communications to support and arrange their activities, then it is these communication that the governments need  to try to monitor. The difficulty is not only with terrorists, information technology has created many opportunities for the criminals, helping the occurrence of money laundering and fraud. It is  also argued that this requires covert surveillance in order to protect the innocent public form those who would commit crimes. It is argued that surveillance is new in the  UK, and that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) is breaking new ground (Sherwood, 2003). However, when looking at this legislation, although it increasing the ability of  surveillance in some situation, such as when the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to make use of telephone and internet records in order to help identify and break cartels,  much of the legislation is putting into statute practices that were already taking place (Sherwood, 2003). For example, a system using information technology has been trailed in Newham, London,  where a series of 150 intelligent cameras were installed, where the cameras were linked to software and could identify individuals. The system was loaded with the images of between 60