Deontological Perspective of State SurveillanceThe deontological ethical system, an ethical formalism, articulates that what is considered moral is the motive or intent of the actor and not the consequence of the action (Pollock, 2012 page 26). The philosopher Immanuel Kant states that the only good thing is good will, if a person carries out an act driven by good will; it can be considered a moral action even if it entails negative consequences. Kant states that we must treat people as ends in themselves and not just as means to an end. To examine whether government monitoring is ethical from a Kantian perspective, it is necessary to discuss why the government monitors its citizens. One of the main reasons why the government monitors the population is to discover those people in the general public who are involved in serious crimes or terrorist activities. Many advocates of state surveillance are of the opinion that, to uncover individuals involved in major terrorist or criminal activity, the government must actively monitor all of its citizens through the use of surveillance. Because the government casts such a wide monitoring net, it uses citizens as a means to an end. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, leaked classified NSA flies revealing mass surveillance operations carried out by the NSA (Greenwald, 2013). One of the many details shown is that mass surveillance has had no apparent impact on the prevention of terrorism (Greenwald, 2013). Most of the information collected was not used to prevent a terrorist attack. Surveillance does not protect rights to life, property, etc. from violation by terrorists. However it gives the citizen... a means of paper... individuals, but also a means to an end. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, state surveillance is ethical because the protection of citizens outweighs that of privacy. From the perspective of natural law, mass surveillance from the perspective of the social contract is unethical and represents a violation of our social contract, especially the right to privacy. Relativism has an effect on property crimes, but not on the incidence of violence. While others hold the view that surveillance is appropriate, the unbridled use of state surveillance has led to the suppression of press freedom. In ethical relativism, if a terrorist attack does not occur or if the rule fails to prevent an attack, then the rule leads to many negative outcomes since the privacy of US citizens has been violated without any gain in terms of protection. And determining which of these cases will occur in the future is difficult to determine.