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 ...
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...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.
In the past few years the National Security Agency has been all over the news, and not in a good way. Former contractor of the National Security Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to several media outlets on such a scale the world took notice. The day the world learned about the Prism program among others was June, 5, 2013 when Ed Snowden gave the specifics of the programs to The Guardian, and the Washington Post. Ed Snowden turned those secrets over as a member of the NSA but fled the country before the leaks so he would not be imprisoned by the authorities. Immediately after the leaks Ed Snowden became infamous with around the clock watch as to what country would grant his asylum, he currently resides in a Moscow airport pending appeal (Staff, 2013). He claimed he “did not want to live in a society like this” that’s why he decided to turn over states secret for all the world to see (Staff, 2013). Now that you know the man behind the leaks it is time that you find out about the program, and the reach and impact it really had.
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 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
The people’s apprehensiveness does not come from the government’s ability to monitor their phone calls. It is the idea that they are listening to their individual conversations. The government needs to communicate to its citizens on the capabilities of the program. Most of the information on the limits of PRISM has come from the data leaks of Edward Snowden. The common consensus is that the government is able to access information by merely advising a meeting with a judge that is not withheld to the public. However, contrary to the popular belief that they are listening to phone calls, they are merely collecting the date and length of each phone call (Stray).
There are many types of surveillance’s that the government as set in motion. For instance, computer surveillance, phone surveillance, and Camera surveillance. The government is always claiming that they aren’t spying on everyday Americans but on the webpage www.eff.org on How the National Security Agency private domestic Spying Program Works, tells us a whole different story. The Government first convinced the major telephone companies such as Sprint and AT&T to deliver the records of the call-detail of their customers. This was done without any judicial oversight or a warrant. Also these phone companies allowed the National Security Agency to install practical transmission surveillance equipment Where the NSA could analyze certain key words or keyboard patterns and the connections. No warrant was issued for this as well it violat...
Whether the U.S. government should strongly keep monitoring U.S. citizens or not still is a long and fierce dispute. Recently, the debate became more brutal when technology, an indispensable tool for modern live, has been used by the law enforcement and national security officials to spy into American people’s domestic.
The same surveillance state has become the new normal in America and is disturbingly recognizable today. Over six hundred state, local, and federal agencies conduct intelligence operations through Joint Terrorism Task Forces and Fusion Centers. In 2004, the ACLU discovered an FBI spying on political advocacy groups and found out that the FBI lied to hide these improper activities from Congress and the American public. The Senate report found the intelligence gathering at Fusion Centers was “flawed, irrelevant, unrelated to terrorism, and posed a serious threat to privacy (Rhode, 2017).” The Thought Police watch people in their public and private lives through the use of telescreens, microphones, and cameras and enforce loyalty and
As of June 30, 2012, there are more than two million Internet users around the world (“World Internet Users Statistics Usage and World Population Stats”). The National Security Agency (NSA) has been tracking U.S. citizens since 2005 ("EFF NSA Spying | Electronic Frontier Foundation"). They are supposedly to only track suspects and dangerous people, but instead have dug deep into the life of the innocent. Although their intentions may be morally correct, the NSA is jeopardizing the private information from the Internet and because of that must be outlawed to protect the people of the United States.
How would you feel if everything you did on the internet, every text you sent, and every call you made was seen by someone? That is what the NSA is doing right now. According to Wikipedia, the National Security Agency is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.[1] They have been a controversial topic since the 1970s when it was revealed that they had been wiretapping Americans’ telephones. Their surveillance has only grown since then, even though most Americans disagree with it. [2] The NSA’s domestic surveillance is unconstitutional, ineffective, and a violation of privacy that needs to be stopped.
The article “A Surveillance Society” By William E, Thompson States that surveillance is a major part of today’s society and most people throughout their day wouldn’t even notice if they were being watched. Cameras can be found on almost every street corner and in every gas station or convenient store. In The terrorist attacks of 9/11 played a major role in starting this technology trend, the United States government and Law enforcement started using cameras that they had set up to more or less spy on the US population. The US government then revised and expanded the Patriot Act in 2006, which in a nut shell meant, they were allowed to spy on anyone they wanted to through there daily routines. But it doesn’t stop there, large corporations and
Imagine living in a country where people know that their online activity and searches are unmonitored, therefore, nothing can be traced back to them. Every post or message will go unnoticed regardless of the threat it may pose. The National Security Agency (NSA) has become a controversial subject after being linked to performing online surveillance on Americans. While many may feel like their privacy is being violated, very few stop to consider the other side of the coin. To begin with, the NSA has a responsibility to protect the United States with every tool at its disposal. Just as the road traffic is monitored for public safety, online monitoring is essential to the
What made the NSA so powerful was, of course, the Internet. The grid of fiber optics that goes all the way around planet Earth and now brings together 40 percent of all humans. By the time Obama took office, the NSA finally found a way to control the abilities of modern telecommunications for almost complete surveillance. It was more than able of both covering the globe with an electronic curtain and searching for a few individuals. For this covert operation, it had put together the required technological tools specifically, cable access points to gather information, computer codes to decipher encryptions, information storage houses to protect its titanic digital harvest, and supercomputers for nanosecond processing of what it was flooding its own system with. By 2012, the concentration of all forms of communication whether voice, text, video, or financial via digitization communicates into a world of network fiber optics allow the NSA to watch the globe by breaking into just 190 data hubs which is a massive economy of strength for political surveillance as well as cyberwarfare
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...
Spying is nothing new to the world. History books tell us that ancient civilizations like the Roman Empire, Egypt, Chine, India, and so on used it. On top of that, 1900s regimes like the Former Soviet Union and Nazi’s Germany used spying tactics around the world wars. The main use of spying at that time mostly was for political and military advantage. These countries were successful on spying. However, in the 21st century surveillance is used in different and very complicated way. So many crimes and terrorist attacks forced governments around the world to use electronic surveillance to protect their own people. This electronic surveillance is very complicated and you don’t even know it is happening and you are the target. The US government is the main leader on this. For years the US government used eavesdropping and wire tapping to catch criminals (Landau 301). People debated on the issues, but it was left unanswered. In 2013, surveillance became the nation wide debate topic, once again after Edward Snowdon’s leakage of classified information from the NSA. From the leaked information evidence shows that NSA is surveilling millions of innocent people, illegally. Now, the US government took the use of surveillance to the next level. This level is unprecedented and unheard in human history. The government uses internet to surveil people’s private information; this got my attention and I started to search for reasons. And NSA makes only one argument when asked why they surveil. TERRORISM or CRIME. Then I asked myself; why surveil innocent people who have done absolutely nothing? In this case, I looked around some sources and decided that the government should stop surveilling people illegally. The government should find different ways to stop terrorism and crimes or they should only surveil people with history of violence. On top of that, people should also worry about big companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Citibank, and so on. This is because they have also our private information like the government and there is more chances of private information leaking.
Addressing government surveillance in so broad a medium as the internet necessitates some background information. There are a few key moments to identify. Prior to 9/11, Congress enacted FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. “Congress originally strictly limited FISA's scope so that it could only be used if ‘the primary purpose’ of government surveillance of Americans was foreign-intelligence gathering”; following the 9/11 attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, “amended FISA and significantly weakened this limitation,” enabling the government to demonstrate a significant purpose for surveilling nationals for foreign intelligence (Shamsi 7). The events of 9/11 shook the world, instilling a desire among American and other