Introduction

Intelligence agencies of several nations of the world including the US are running large scale surveillance
programs targeting innocent individuals of the world. The aim of this report is to understand the effect of
these surveillance programs on the privacy of common people and related countermeasures. Implications
of these programs on the worldwide online community has also been discussed(M Hypponen, 2013).

Discussion

It has been recently revealed by the contributions of several individuals that the Intelligence Agencies are
running uncontrolled surveillance programs on foreign citizens. The purpose of the surveillance programs
to gain sensitive and crucial information regarding the daily activities of the individuals and store them for
future use. These types of mass surveillance programs run by intelligence agencies like the NSA are
responsible for leaking the privacy of common citizens.

Some of the surveillance programs are important from a security perspective of the nations. It is quite usual
to run these types of surveillance programs on terrorists, murderers and other criminals. however,
intelligence Agencies are implanting back doors in otherwise secure services like encryption algorithms. this
can be observed as a direct breach of privacy of the users(Cayford, M and Pieters W, 2018).

Most of these activities are focused in the United States because it is the home of corporations that are
providing services to worldwide uses. Therefore, it is the duty of other nations of the world to distribute
power among all by developing open source systems. open-source systems are quite effective against leaks
of privacy due to their security and free availability(Cayford, M and Pieters W, 2018).

Conclusion

The security of privacy of the user is very important for any software platform. the government intelligence
agencies should not be able to access the personal and sensitive data of the users present on software
platforms. The immediate solution is presented in the form of open-source systems that are transparent
and secure at the same time.
References

M Hypponen, (2013), How the NSA betrayed the world’s trust - time to act, Youtube
https://youtu.be/9CqVYUOjHLw
Cayford, M. and Pieters, W, (2018), The effectiveness of surveillance technology: What intelligence officials
are saying, The Information Society, 34(2), pp.88-103
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01972243.2017.1414721