Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on analysis of the tempora surveillance system. Surveillance is a very useful activity to law enforcement agencies, and government organizations for purposes of maintaining social control, recognizing threats, and investigating/ preventing criminal activity. There are a variety of programs developed for purposes of promoting surveillance programs. An example is the Tempora surveillance system. Tempora is a codeword for a secret computer system that was used by the British Government to collect intelligence information through the internet. This system made it possible for the British Government to extract information from the fiber-optic cables. It enabled the British Government to access a large volume of personal information from the users of the internet (Ernst, 2012). To improve on the surveillance capabilities, the government normally uses biometric software and high-speed surveillance computers for purposes of collecting information and data on an individual. However, the enactment of the Freedom of Protections Act prevented intelligence officials from violating the privacy of their subjects. However, for surveillance programs to be effective, there is a need of supervising everyone responsible for collecting and using the intelligence gathered.

There is a need of supervising surveillance programs, for purposes of ensuring their effectiveness.

Carrying out a surveillance program helps the government to collect information to use in protecting the citizens of a state. However, there are instances where the government intelligence agencies or surveillance programs are accused of breaching the privacy of the citizens of a state. Take for example the Tempora surveillance program that was developed by the British government, to spy on the online data of people (Ernst, 2012). Through this program, the British intelligence agencies were able to access millions of personal data, extracted from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. This program was also able to capture telephone conversations between different people.