The monitored society

Today it has become more and more usual that the employees are being supervised by their  bosses. Some bosses can track the employers by using a GPS in their company cell-phone, and there are those who are going through your mail or check which websites you have been visiting. My opinion is that this directors are a little exaggerated, there should be some kind of trust between employees and directors and that trust is not created by monitoring. Although if there is an employee that are not as productive as he should be the director could warn him that if he does not shape up the director will check what he is doing during his working days. What I am curious to know is how productive the bosses are if they need to check what their staff is doing all the time. If the  bosses really feel that they need to monitor the employees I guess it is okay if they are honest and tell everybody that their mails are being read or that there is a GPS in their cell-phone. To snoop on the staff after working hour, however, is not okay. For me that is an intrusion in the privet life.

In other areas this technology can be to great help and even save lives. In older care for example you can have surveillance in an elderly persons apartment that senses if anyone has been in the bathroom over two hours, and sends a warning either to a relative or to some caretaker. There are a lot of other surveillance to help, for example there are medicine boxes that is programmed to give the right amount of medicines to the patient and at the right time. If the patient does not take his medicine an message is sent to a predetermined person, this is very good because then the patient can´t take to much medicine and someone will know if it has not been taken. So in this area monitoring makes the elderly to feel more secure and they know that help will come if something is wrong.

I also wants to mention the surveillance over the society. It is a lively debate today whether there should be cameras in public places. My opinion is that if you are in a public place you act as if you are supervised cause although there are no camera there might be people watching you, so it is not like you are poking your nose or starts to undress. But if they install a camera in a toilet or locker room then I´m going to feel uncomfortable because there you want to be more private. Of course I think that there should not be someone that are sitting and checking the cameras all the time. The cameras should be used when something has happened and the film can be crucial evidence of the incident.  

My conclusion is that surveillance can both save lives and help to catch criminals, it also can make people to feel more secure and calmed. On the other hand if it is used wrong it can lead to making people feel insecure and that anything they do is being supervised.