In the last ten years, information technologies such as video surveillance have inexorably overtaken us at great speed. While such technology certainly has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of our lives, it also raises important ethical questions. For many years the government has monitored us through the use of surveillance technologies such as audio recordings, video recordings, databases, and even wiretapping our phone calls. While computer technology is neither good nor bad, it can be used for both purposes and that is humanity's biggest problem. For this reason, there are many ethical dilemmas that can arise from the misuse of information technology. One such ethical dilemma is whether a government should have the right to use technology to monitor its citizens without their knowledge or consent, and if so, how to limit the government's power to spy. Furthermore, who should be allowed to report when intelligence gathering goes too far or when information is misused? While this trend of advanced monitoring in the United States has been on the rise for years, it is in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In 2001, the United States dramatically increased its use of surveillance technologies, while at the same time changing laws that give law enforcement and other government agencies nearly unlimited powers of surveillance and monitoring. Legislation like the Patriot Act gives the government broad, loosely defined powers to do things like monitor computers and phone calls without a warrant. Government agencies also now have unrestricted access to medical records, financial documents and a host of other information. All related moral and ethical issues are left to individual interpretation. While it is necessary to sacrifice privacy for security, it seems that humans' growing need to spy on each other seems to have overtaken all security priorities when it comes to surveillance. Advances in information technology simply allow the information of more individuals to be easily accessible to those who have the means to acquire it. It therefore seems that as technology improves there will always be more innovative ways to violate an individual's privacy. If kept within the bounds of constitutional laws, surveillance can actually be a good resource for the protection and defense of our country, but if used to track down minority individuals, women, immigrants, etc., surveillance can be a dangerous weapon, which unfortunately at this moment, it is.