Enemy of the State:Thoughts and Connections

Enemy Of the State is definitely an action packed movie with drama nicely woven into the plot. Personally I enjoyed this movie and would watch it repeatedly. Although this particular story was fiction it seemed real.It really made me wonder about what the government is up to behind the scenes. It also made me question how appropriate and “safe” government surveillance is. I do have my doubts about the government behaving in the same manner as they were portrayed in this movie. In the movie the government essentially had the power to take over a persons life without them knowing because they had the means to do so. One line from the movie that stood out to me was “Let’s get into his life”. There was a lot of secrecy and bribery going on. I thought it was noteworthy that they politician had others to do the “dirty work”. The overall feel of the government seemed less helpful and more cynical. There was nothing that they could not access thus there was no privacy. Personal phone calls and emails were no longer personal.In the movie phone conversations were document and one wrong word made a person suspect. I guess that if there was privacy there would be no way of finding “suspects” or people that disrupted the safety. In my opnion I don’t think that the government should get so personal that they know a persons every move as they move around their home. The government should have access to the basic information so they can contact a person without stalking them. In the movie there was not a moment that came across as safety trying to be established by means of surveillance.All in all its hard to agree that restricting freedoms were necessary for the safety of the community based on how extreme things got in the movie. In my eyes there is a thin line between trying to maintain safety and going overboard. No doubt the restrictions in the movie were categorized as overboard. I think that individual freedoms should be restricted for the safety of the community when it has proven to be a threat to safety of the community. But someone has to then determine what is a threat and what isn’t.Robert wasn’t proven a threat to the community until after his freedoms were restricted.The idea of when individual freedom should be restricted is complicated.

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