The Effectiveness and Ethicality of Mass Surveillance

In the wake of the National Security Agency's (NSA) scandal of 2013, the principles and usage of surveillance programs have been debated on an international level. The debacle began when former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, released classified security files on the NSA's mass data surveillance programs to journalists at The Guardian, a British newspaper ("The Surveillance State..."). The contents of the leaks reveal intrusive programs, such as PRISM, that obtain large amounts of user data from American companies in the form of telephone numbers, emails, private documents, and videos, all in the name of preventing terrorist activity ("The Surveillance State..."). The existence of such data mining without the users' knowledge or consent catalyzes enormous controversy among U.S. citizens and global leaders, in spite of assurances from American government authorities that the usage of mass surveillance is imperative to inhibiting terrorist activities in America. Despite these claims, there is no substantial evidence that mass telephone and internet surveillance is essential to preventing terrorist activities because of statistical and situational support and the violation of ethical and legal citizen privacy rights.

Mass surveillance measures have been used since the Bush administration to catch terrorists before they can strike, thanks to the creation of the Patriot Act of 2001 and the prominent principles laid out in Section 215 and Section 702 of the legislative; over 50 cases have been cited as successes because of the usage of these methods (Bergen et al.). However, that claim is not entirely accurate; the director of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, later claimed that in four of the twelve terrorist cases allegedly catalyzed ...

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