NSA Spying: A Case Study

The government looks at our emails, text messages, listens to our phone calls and other similar communication devices. “The U.S. has led a worldwide effort to limit individual privacy and enhance the capability of its police and intelligence services to eavesdrop on personal conversations. The campaign has had two legal strategies. The first made it mandatory for all digital telephone switches, cellular and satellite phones and all developing communication technologies to build in surveillance capabilities; the second sought to limit the dissemination of software that provides encryption, a technique which allows people to scramble their communications and files to prevent others from reading them” (Solove). How much of this did you know about? Almost all of our current devices already have technology that makes it an easy access for the government to know about all of your conversations.

Whether it is calling someone on your phone or online shopping on the computer, people are more connected than ever to the internet. However, a person might be oblivious to the fact that they are being watched using these technologies. The NSA (National Security Agency) is an intelligence organization for the U.S. to protect information systems and foreign intelligence information. Recently the NSA has been accused of invading personal privacy through web encryption, tracking, and using personal information for their own uses and without permission. The surveillance of the NSA produces unlawful invasion of privacy causing an unsecure nation.

Over the past few years, government surveillance in the United States has become a widely debated issue with two completely different sides. The National Security Agency, a government agency known for it’s efforts in spying and surveillance, has been at the center of this issue since it’s founding in the 1950’s. The Cold War had just begun and the United States government was doing anything they could to find potential terrorists and communists. In fact, many famous people including Einstein were being spied on by the government to find citizens with potential ties to the Soviet Union. (New York Times - New Details Emerge from the Einstein Files; How the FBI Tracked His Phone Calls and His Trash) As the cold war came to an end in the early 90’s, NSA spying seemed to come to an end as well.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is an Act of Congress passed in 1978 and signed by the then President Jimmy Carter. The Act stipulates the procedures to be followed when obtaining intelligence from foreign powers and agents of foreign powers both physically and electronically. The Act has been amended severally. In 2001, it was amended to involve groups and terrorist organizations not supported by foreign governments in an Act called the USA PATRIOT Act. A further amendment was done in 2007 to overhaul most of the provisions, in the Act called Protect America Act. A final amendment was done in 2008 called the FISA Amendments Act of 2008

Privacy is what allows people to feel secure in their surroundings. With privacy, one is allowed to withhold or distribute the information they want by choice, but the ability to have that choice is being violated in today’s society. Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who sacrifices freedom or liberty will eventually have neither.” And that’s the unfortunate truth that is and has occurred in recent years. Privacy, especially in such a fast paced moving world, is extremely vital yet is extremely violated, as recently discovered the NSA has been spying on U.S. citizens for quite a while now; based on the Fourth Amendment, the risk of leaked and distorted individual information, as well as vulnerability to lack of anonymity.

Rand Paul, of the Wall Street Journal states, “How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon” (Paul)? Verizon is an enormous phone company that covers more than 308 million people. All of the phone information secured in the Verizon Company, is now being monitored and viewed by the US Government, which was initially kept secret from the people, under code name PRISM (Greenwald). The information under this code name was then leaked by a former NSA worker. Unfortunately, just like the book Big Brother’s Watching, it is the U.S Government that is conducting domestic surveillance on Verizon. Companies like Verizon, can’t simply shut off the eyes the government and they also cannot protect their users, now violated, Fourth Amendment rights. The use of domestic surveillance by the American government must not be implemented, in order to prevent the violation of American’s Fourth Amendment right, to ensure privacy for the American people, and due to American’s distrustful views toward domestic surveillance and the NSA. The U.S government should not monitor its people, and should not violate their rights to privacy.

The case being heard today is about the government surveillance of Muslims in New York city and New Jersey. In 2012, the Associated Press, published a series of stories that revealed the existence of a secret surveillance program implemented by the New York City Police Department, also known as the NYPD. The purpose of this program was to surveill and monitor the Muslim American communities in New York and New Jersey since the year 2002. According to the Associated Press, surveillance of these Muslim Communities took place in a variety of settings including: Muslim-owned businesses, muslim college organizations, and mosques to name a few. In the Associated Press’s coverage of this program, they divulged document after document acknowledging the existence of its program as well as its purpose of the program; however, the leaked documents by the Associated Press were unredacted. This alerted the general public to names of various individuals as well as organizations and business that were being surveilled by the NYPD.

Government surveillance is made with the intent to keep American society safe, usually made in response to major terrorist attacks to prevent future terrorist attacks. After the tragic events of 9/11 the Us government took measures to prevent future terrorist attacks from happening. One major act enacted was the Patriot act.

The Internet powers our country. Not only do hundreds of millions of Americans use it daily, our government and states use it to do important national and international business. Our government already utilizes it to monitor the activity of its people. This monitoring has especially risen after events such as the Boston Bombing and the attacks of 9/11. The main reason that the government does this is to keep us safe. If the government puts more slack on this matter, then it will give a chance for terrorists to complete their objective. The normal person does not know how many terrorist attacks may have been stopped in the past years due to this surveillance, and how many lives it may have saved. Therefore, we cannot let our government halt

Body 4 Con: Numbers suggest effectiveness, one prevented attack could save billions especially with groups like ISIS only continually growing

On June 6, 2013 the details of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities where given by Edward Snowden to the public; raising concerns of Americans about their privacy. Edward Snowden, a former employee of the NSA, gave the alarming details of surveillance programs in his interview on how the NSA accesses our emails, calls, internet activity, and anything else that is related to technology. In this system of surveillance the NSA can gather data from companies and tap the cables that are vital for moving around information from technological devices, they may also use their relationships with technology companies to get emails or information straight from U.S. servers. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) Nevertheless, the claim is

Since September 11th, 2001 the NSA has been monitoring public. This was the day of the terrorist attack on the twin towers, the day the NSA was formed. It was originally created to help prevent these types of attacks from happening again, but the surveillance methods were limited due to the technological disadvantages they faced compared to how far technology has come since then. Their main purpose has always been the surveillance of the public, by collecting all this information they can foresee these attacks before they happen which they will be able to stop, ultimately helping out the entire country by keeping the citizens safe.

In Marc Thiessen’s article “Leaks, Not the NSA Programs, Deserve Condemnation,” Thiessen discusses the NSA leaks from 2013, criticizing Edward Snowden for leaking this information to the public. He states that the criticism of the “warrantless wiretapping” of the NSA spying programs are not warranted, with the claims of violations of the Fourth Amendment being nullified by the ruling of the Smith v. Maryland case. He then list three methods of obtaining information for combating terrorism, which are interrogation, insurgency, and communication monitoring.

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

In “How the NSA’s Domestic Spying Program Works,” the author reveals that many of “aspects of the (NSA) Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.” The author develops his thesis by detailing a few examples of major telecommunication companies that share customer’s call records to the NSA (AT&T, Sprint) and explaining that programs were implemented to monitor the emails of citizens (“amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day”). The author uses examples of how NSA decisions were made without a “warrant or any judicial oversight,” in order to increase citizen awareness of how the NSA functions. The author uses a erudite tone to address the audience of Americans