US Government Monitoring Its Citizens

1413 Words3 Pages

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.
Since the terrorist attacks at Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance issue often has turned away the table in the debate of individual privacy or counterterrorism. By passing the Patriot Act, Congress gave President Bush an immense law enforcement authority to boost U.S's counterterrorism, and the President used his enlarged powers to forward specific programs in order to reduce the threat of terrorism and defend the country’s safety.
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...

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...potential terrorist activity.

WORK CITED
McCutcheon, Chuck. "Government Surveillance." CQ Researcher 30 Aug. 2013: 717-40. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
"Domestic Surveillance." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 18 Nov. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. .
"NSA Surveillance Programs." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. .

WORK CITED
McCutcheon, Chuck. "Government Surveillance." CQ Researcher 30 Aug. 2013: 717-40. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
"Domestic Surveillance." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 18 Nov. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. .
"NSA Surveillance Programs." Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2013. .

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