The NSA Surveillance Constitutionality: Edward Snowden

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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 that surveillance agencies do throw away all the data they collect from people they are not targeting in three days, except the metadata. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) The metadata; who sent a message, who it was too, what time it was sent, and other things are stored in their servers for up to a year. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) This allows the surveillance programs to build a profile for each person on who talks to who, who knows who, and even see where people are at times. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) These details have risen questions about the constitutionality of these surveillance programs; is the NSA violating our constitutional rights? Taking the surveillances’ program description into consideration; I must argue that these surveillance programs are violating Americans’ constitutional rights. Freedom of speech and press, right to privacy, and the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant; is violated with these surveillance programs. One may think of these violatio... ... middle of paper ... ...oitras) Works Cited http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files Scriberia, Scott Cawley, Jemima Kiss, Paul Boyd and James Ball, Length: 2min 53sec, theguardian.com , Tuesday 26 November 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/nov/26/nsa-gchq-surveillance-made-simple-video-animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOCdxfkNXB8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybNpQ04vhDA http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/us/eavesdropping-ensnared-american-law-firm.html?_r=0 NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds Barton Gellman, Published: August 15, 2013 http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/nsa-report-on-privacy-violations-in-the-first-quarter-of-2012/395/ Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRASFEB. 15, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/us/eavesdropping-ensnared-american-law-firm.html?_r=1

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