Just a couple years back I would’ve thought conspiracy theorists who say the government is listening in on our conversations were just crazy and delusional. Turns out, those crazy people actually weren’t too far off from the truth. The National Security Agency (NSA) has just recently been put in the limelight by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA was tapping in on every cellular and internet activity in the USA and for paying off foreign officials across the world to conduct surveillance in their government and on their people. To be able to carry out wide-scale surveillance on the entire world requires a lot of power and influence, so how did the NSA carry out such a heavy task? How did they become an omnipresent surveillance agency? Now that everyone knows about NSA operations is the price of worsening foreign and domestic relations worth keeping world-wide surveillance to better government security?
The key to the heavy lifting of the surveillance within U.S. borders must be credited to the highly complex program called PRISM. PRISM is a program that sorts through all of the metadata, a set of data that describes and gives information about other data, for key words hostile to government security. The metadata comes from well-known and used companies that were paid millions of dollars to relay all activity under their supervision to the NSA to be analyzed. The creation of PRISM came from a specific part of the NSA dubbed NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO). TAO is responsible for making new hacking programs and wiretapping software (More NSA revelations: backdoors, snooping tools and worldwide reactions) was responsible for things like the bugging of all iPhone’s. As Martin Luther King said “There comes a time ...
... middle of paper ...
...ed onto by Obama, allowing the wiretapping, searches of business records, and surveillance of individuals (that are ONLY) suspected of being a terrorist or related to terrorist activities.
Turns out that those “crazy” people weren’t crazy enough to imagine what the NSA was really capable of. There was the NSA’s climb to power were they used 9/11 to harness our nation’s fear and used it to empower themselves. As of now foreign relations remain stable, but as time passes huge global politics may shift as Edward Snowden and further investigations may prove to reveal more secrets on the NSA. Also, the fiery controversy of whether the compromise of millions of people’s privacy is worth a secure government security is still being debated. Many are outraged of the new findings in the NSA’s dark secrets and are pushing for new rights to privacy to combat NSA surveillance.
The National Security Agency or NSA for short is a United States federal government intelligence organization that is used for global monitoring and collecting data. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush implemented the NSA’s domestic spying program to conduct a range of surveillance activities inside the United States. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this program as it allows the NSA to tap into the public’s phone calls, cameras, internet searches, text messages, and many other mediums to seek out individuals that may be potential threats to the security of the general public. Many individuals say that the tactics used by the NSA are unconstitutional as they invade people’s privacy. This is primarily
The aftereffects of the September 11, 2001 attacks led to Congress passing sweeping legislation to improve the United States’ counterterrorism efforts. An example of a policy passed was Domestic Surveillance, which is the act of the government spying on citizens. This is an important issue because many people believe that Domestic Surveillance is unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, while others believe that the government should do whatever is possible in order to keep the citizens safe. One act of Domestic Surveillance, the tracking of our phone calls, is constitutional because it helps fight terrorism, warns us against potential threats, and gives US citizens a feeling of security.
...t time such searches have been confirmed. The confirmation of these NSA searches on Americans’ communications also increased the difficulty of President Barack Obama’s initial defense of the wide surveillance that occurred in 2013.
Edward Snowden is America’s most recent controversial figure. People can’t decide if he is their hero or traitor. Nevertheless, his leaks on the U.S. government surveillance program, PRISM, demand an explanation. Many American citizens have been enraged by the thought of the government tracing their telecommunication systems. According to factbrowser.com 54% of internet users would rather have more online privacy, even at the risk of security (Facts Tagged with Privacy). They say it is an infringement on their privacy rights of the constitution. However, some of them don’t mind; they believe it will help thwart the acts of terrorists. Both sides make a good point, but the inevitable future is one where the government is adapting as technology is changing. In order for us to continue living in the new digital decade, we must accept the government’s ability to surveil us.
...the previous Act. The last Act is the FISA Act of 2008 “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act”, which allows intelligence professionals to monitor terrorist communications, while protecting civil liberties of Americans, more quickly and efficiently. (USDOJ) These legal changes have allowed not only the investigation and prosecution of terrorists to be more proficient, but it has also help change the structure of the operations of agencies to enhance counter-terrorism efforts.
The NSA and U.S. government sifting through our private information is but a small inconvenience that we must sacrifice in order to protect our own freedom and safety. Domestic Surveillance roots back to the 1910’s, where the assassination of President McKinley, created a Bureau of Investigation that would trace the efforts of the Communists attempting an uprising in America. This would be the foundings behind Domestic Surveillance in America, and would continue on after World War II where the government created the NSA and CIA, with the main purposes
According to John W. Whitehead, “The fact that the government can now, at any time, access entire phone conversations, e-mail exchanges, and other communications from months or years past should frighten every American.” (Whitehead). The NSA
In early June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former defense contractor who had access to NSA database while working for an intelligence consulting company, leaked classified documents reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) is recording phone calls of millions of Americans along with gathering private data and spying foreign Internet activity. The Washington Post later broke the news disclosed PRISM, a program can collect data on Internet users. The leaked documents publicly stated a vast objection. Many people were shocked by the scale of the programs, even elected representatives were unaware of the surveillance range. A nationwide debate over privacy rights have been sparked. Although supporters claim that the NSA only does its best to protect the United States from terrorists as well as respecting Americans' rights and privacy, many civil rights advocates feel that the government failed to be clear about the limit of the surveillance programs, threatening Americans' civil...
In 2001, the United States fell victim to a multitude of tragedies. The most unforgettable, of course, being the terrorist attack on September 11th. Following the threat, Congress knew something had to be done to strengthen security controls. On October 23, 2001, Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican Representative, introduced provisions to a previously sponsored House bill. By the next day, the act passed in the House with a vote ratio of three hundred and fifty-seven to sixty-six. The following day, the Senate took a vote on the bill, passing it by ninety-eight to one. Finally, on October 26, 2001, the USA Patriot Act was signed into law. The bill was intended to strengthen federal anti-terrorism investigations. But is the USA Patriot Act working to the full potential that it was originally intended? This is something that we are now going to explore. We will look deeper into, not only what the bill is, but also it’s journey to getting to the final draft and how it got passed. We will also explore the proponents and opponents of the act, and what they have to say about it. Finally, I will shed some light on who exactly is being effected now that this act is in place, and if they have been given a little too much power.
...e administration plans to introduce legislation that would alter the N.S.A’s privacy breaches and end its illegal data collections. Citing an identical argument, that the government cannot indicate terrorist attacks that have been stopped by the intelligence gathering programs, a review group of the Administration “called for major changes to the program; the latter also concluded that the bulk collection is illegal.”3
“There are about 3 billion phone calls made within the USA every day” (Romano). Now picture you’re calling your friend on the phone. Sometimes we can take small privilege like this for granted. Now imagine that the government is listening to every single phone conversation that we make. Why wouldn’t this scare you? I know it terrifies me. Wiretaps are a problem that concerns every single person in the country. But it isn’t just wiretaps; with a program called Prism the NSA has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, and other US internet giants (Glenn). Everything we search for on Google, every message sent or received on Facebook, every item purchased on Apple is all seen by the NSA. The government is overusing their power to spy on its citizens and it needs to stop.
The initial document released by Edward Snowden was an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordering Verizon to supply all of the metadata from their customers to the U.S. government on an ongoing basis. (Greenwald, 2013) At first glance this doesn’t appear to be too alarming. Metadata is strictly statistical data that identifies locations and length of calls, but doesn’t reveal the identity of the callers, or the content of the call itself. However, later documents released by Snowden reveal that this metadata was cross-referenced with other databases, which enabled the government to identify both callers. Furthermore, the government created software that analyzed the metadata to identify and track data patterns. (Roberts & Ackerman, 2013) Additional documents released by Snowden indicate that, through the creation of the Prism program, the government was able to conduct unlimited surveillance on Internet traffic through servers with Google, Facebook, Apple and others. Not only was the U.S. government using this data, but they were sharing it with allied countries. (Hopkins, 2013) Subsequent Snowden releases exposed that the U.S. was also spying on these allied countries. This is really alarming.
Domestic Surveillance Citizens feeling protected in their own nation is a crucial factor for the development and advancement of that nation. The United States’ government has been able to provide this service for a small tax and for the most part it is money well spent. Due to events leading up to the terrifying attacks on September 11, 2001 and following these attacks, the Unites States’ government has begun enacting certain laws and regulations that ensure the safety of its citizens. From the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 to the most recent National Security Agency scandal, the government has attempted and for the most part succeeded in keeping domestic safety under control. Making sure that the balance between obtaining enough intelligence to protect the safety of the nation and the preservation of basic human rights is not extremely skewed, Congress has set forth requisites in FISA which aim to balance the conflicting goals of privacy and security; but the timeline preceding this act has been anything but honorable for the United States government.
The American government used to be able to keep the people in happy ignorance to the fact that they watch every move they make. After certain revelations of people like Edward Snowden, the public knows the extent of the government spying. On June 5, 2013 Edward Snowden leaked documents of the NSA to the Guardian (The Guardian 2). The whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed to the world how the American government collects information like cell phone metadata, Internet history, emails, location from phones, and more. President Obama labeled the man a traitor because he showed the world the illegal acts the NSA performs on US citizens (Service of Snowden 1). The government breached the people’s security, and now the people are afraid because everyone is aware of how the US disapproves of people who do not agree with their programs. Obama said that these programs find information about terrorists living in the US, but he has lit...
Video cameras are being deployed around the nation to help with crime solving, but some people are concerned about their privacy. Having cameras to monitor public areas have shown to be useful in situations such as identifying the bombers of the Boston marathon in early 2013. There have also been issues with these cameras however, as people are concerned they are too invasive of their privacy and have been misused by police officers in the past. Some people want to find a balance in using cameras in public so that they can continue to help with crime solving while making sure they are not too invasive and are properly used.