Security or Privacy

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Recommended: Privacy versus security

After 9/11, many Americans accepted the fact that the Government and the National Security was taking an aggressive surveillance action to prevent another terrorist attack. However, what the Government and the National Security is doing is gathering as much information as they can to use it later against the same people they claim to protect. What type of information is the Government and National Security gathering? How is this mass surveillance, protecting the citizens of the United States? Is it worth giving up privacy for security that may not protect anyone after all?
Recently Edward Snowden a former National Security Agent (NSA) said that the reason he leaked government information was to warn the United State citizen of the danger they are facing from the government surveillance programs. According to Snowden, the NSA is gathering phone calls context and internet information on every American, storing this mass of information to use in the future to against the people they are supposed to protect. The government claims they had an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that allow them to collect metadata information from the Verizon telephone company, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others, to analyze the information for a possible threat to the United State. The problem with this is that the government collection of information of all Americans violates the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which protects Americans from intrusion to their private lives from the government.
In a recent article by Julian Sanchez a research fellow from Cato Institute said on a recent cyber attack on Google that, "The Google hackers appear to have been interested in … gathering information ...

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...but fear that the government who is suppose to protecting them will turn around and use this information against them in the future. It is important that the government come up with a solution to protect the privacy and security of all Americans with out violating the law.

Works Cited

McQuade, Samuel C. "government intelligence programs." Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.

"Securing our liberty." Commonweal 140.12 (2013): 5. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.

Sanchez, Julian. "Surveillance Can't Make Us Secure." The Nation (15 Feb. 2010). Rpt. in Civil Liberties. Ed. Noël Merino. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2014.

Watts, Tim J. "Edward Snowden." American Government. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.

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