Hawa: How far should a state have a right to monitor the actions of people within its borders?

The state should have a right to monitor the actions of the people within its borders if the consequences of the actions of a person have an impact on the country as well as its people. The government’s role is to ensure that the welfare of the people in the country is well-looked after and to increase or sustain economic growth. If monitoring the actions of the people is what the government needs to do to ensure the society’s welfare and spur economic growth, then the state should have a right to do so. This can be illustrated in the case of Stalin’s dictatorship over Russia before World War II. In order to increase the farm’s output to alleviate the problem of famine in Russia, he introduced collectivization. In order to ensure the people complied with his policies, he sent secret spies to monitor the actions of the people. This has successfully increased the farm’s output in Russia over the years as those who did not follow his policies were exiled. However, the state does not have the right to monitor the actions of the people if it leads them behaving against their own will out of fear. Every citizen in the country ought to have the rights to do the things they wish. However, they may not do so if they are aware that their every move is being watched and monitored by the government. This will cause them to behave against their wishes and they may follow the policies of the government because they have to and not because they want to. This can be illustrated in the case of Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Hitler had his own spies known the Stormtroopers who set out to catch citizens who were plotting against him or going against his policies. This created fear and suspicion among the Germans during that time and they blindly followed his policies. This clearly does not ensure the society’s welfare and instead creates a nasty environment for the Germans to live in because they could not trust anyone and they lived in fear. Hence, the government should not monitor the actions of the people if it infringes on their personal rights and creates a problem within the society.