After the disclosures by Edward Snowden turned a critical eye to the NSA many people questioned the legality of the acts. The NSA claimed that their work was legal and had prevented many terrorist plots. However, evidence of only four plots was ever found. Even if the acts were founded in law, they still angered large numbers of citizens. Many citizens do not care if the spying is legal, believing that it is morally wrong. Government surveillance organizations have grown to be extremely powerful and are capable of accessing large swaths of personal information; these abilities intrude into the private lives of citizens and need to be curtailed.
The NSA collects information via various means. Some information is taken during transmission and then decrypted. Most decryption is not done by methods used in war, but instead the NSA undermined cryptographic standards and then utilized the weaknesses they had implanted into the standards to decrypt the intercepted information. Aside from transmission interceptions, some information is taken directly from company servers. The first revelation was in June of 2013 when it was revealed that Verizon had given its database of all its calls to the United States government. However, this information was not taken unwittingly as Verizon had full knowledge of their decision. Many other companies knew that information was being taken, but had no choice in the matter as a secret court was assigning orders to reveal information without the use of a proper warrant. The companies were both forced to comply and keep the fact that this information had been given up secret from the company’s customers. Aside from taking information with court orders, the NSA also took information directly from companies’ ...
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... searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Thus, a warrant cannot be given on a general location or population. Examples of this being neighborhoods, a person and their friends, the people who happen to be in a building, or the individuals who have used a service. Of course, legal or not, it is unlikely that the NSA will stop spying, and if they do there will always be some organization devoted to spying on people, be it a government agency or non-government information thieves.
A change of law, though unlikely, will only stop one government. Any other sovereign government can easily do what the NSA did for its own gain and cannot be forced to abide by the laws of another country. What can be done to prevent incursions of privacy is, rather than block one government by change of law, change the security measures used by the companies storing the information.
In an article written by James Ball he explains that the NSA collects “pretty much everything it can”. Ball explains that the NSA collects information from everyone “including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity”. The NSA “collect(s) all available information from all available sources all the time, every time, always” is also said by the Domestic Surveillance Directorate, implying that the NSA collects information from phone calls, messages, internet browsing history, emails, and any other possible mediums of information. This is unacceptable as a lot of private information that is being held by the NSA is from people that are not under suspicion of illegal activities. Yes, the NSA is gathering information from everyone so it can identify threats before people have a chance of attacking. However, not everyone is a threat to the safety of the general public so storing the information of all people is not justified. It would be understandable if the NSA just analyzed text messages, phone calls, and other sources of information to be able to determine if someone is a potential threat and store their information only if they are a suspect. One’s text message should not be stored if it does not show any potential threat. People’s transaction information should not be kept if it is not a suspicious transaction. Apart from the NSA analyzing
The NSA is a U.S. intelligence agency responsible for providing the government with information on inner and foreign affairs, particularly for the prevention of terrorism and crime. The NSA maintains several database networks in which they receive private information on American citizens. The agency has access to phone calls, emails, photos, recordings, and backgrounds of practically all people residing in the United States. Started in 1952 by President Harry Truman, the NSA is tasked with the global monitoring and surveillance of targeted individuals in American territory. As part of the growing practice of mass surveillance in the United States, the agency collects and stores all phone records of all American citizens. People argue that this collected information is very intrusive, and the NSA may find something personal that someone may not have wanted anyone to know. While this intrusion's main purpose is to avoid events of terrorism, recent information leaks by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, show that the agency may actually be infringing upon the rights of the American citizen. Whether people like it or not, it seems that the NSA will continue to spy on the people of the United States in an attempt to avert acts of terrorism. Although there are many pros and cons to this surveillance of American citizens, the agency is ultimately just doing its job to protect the lives of the people. Unless a person is actually planning on committing a major crime, there is no real reason for citizens to worry about the NSA and it's invasion of our privacy. The agency is not out to look for embarrassing information about its citizens, rather, only searches for and analyzes information which may lead to the identification of a targe...
We all have heard the quote “Life, Liberty, Land, and the Pursuit to Happiness” and that is the promise of a life here in America. As Americans we pride ourselves on these freedoms that allow us to live everyday. We are one of the only countries that have this promise and it is what draws people from all of over the world to come here. Our founding fathers of the United States of America wrote these words, having no idea the impact that they would have for the rest of this countries history. Those words were the foundation for government, and it wasn’t perfect at first but slowly it matured into what we have today, strong and powerful. To other nations America is seen as the World Power, and a somewhat perfect nation to live in. Unfortunately corruption, scandals and controversies have tainted our once golden glow, and other nations are weary of watching their steps. One of the most controversial elements to our government is the NSA. Hidden in the shadows from American and global knowledge is what the NSA is actually doing and watching out for. Only very recently has the NSA been ripped from the shadows and brought to light what exactly is going on inside those walls. They are “spying” on not only America’s personal data, but foreign leaders as well. The NSA says it’s for the safety for everyone against terrorism and attacks. However, it has gone way to far and violates a constitutional right, privacy. The NSA has overstepped their boundaries, and spying doesn’t seem to make a difference in safety.
A short background on the laws concerning surveillance will help clear up some misconceptions on the NSA. Back in 1968, the Wiretap Act protected citizens from the government listening to their phone call...
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...
The NSA has been secretly ordered to eavesdrop by the Bush administration after the 9/11 terrorist attack. The base of where the NSA has been operating their wiretapping agenda is in Bluff Dale, Utah the building sprawls 1,500,000 square feet and possess the capacity to hold as much as five zeta bytes of data it has cost almost $2,000,000,000. The act of spying over the USA citizens even though they are suspicious is a threat to the people’s privacy and the privacy of other countries’ members are being infringed on by the NSA by the act of wiretapping. The action of wiretapping violates laws for privacy, like the Bill of Right’s Amendment Four which says “Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions”. The wiretapping controversy has caused the panic and hysteria of the citizens of the USA and USA’s allies. This panic and hysteria has troubled the government by resulting to mistrust and concern against them by both groups. The panic effect of the NSA wiretapping has caused many people such as journalist to have their freedom of speech to be restricted in fear of the NSA to stamp them as terrorist and according to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights that is an infringement of the people’s right of freedom of expression consists of the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and the implied rights of association and belief.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”-Benjamin Franklin. We live in an age where governments invade the private lives of its citizens in the name of safety. Ironically, anyone who displaying a hint of paranoia when it comes to government surveillance or secrecy is automatically labeled a conspiracy theorist or a kook. It seems that in the U.S., it has become frowned upon to believe that our government would ever infringe on our rights, unintentionally or deliberately. After all, they can’t, it says so in the constitution! But, alas, it turns out “Big Brother” has been very busy the past decade. It seems as though every year new government scandals arise, from cover ups to spying on U.S. citizens. Law enforcement and government agencies are slowly finding “loopholes” through problematic areas of the constitution, with little regard for citizens’ rights. It is our duty as citizens, to not tolerate violations of the law that our nation was founded upon. By examining history and other countries’ policies regarding privacy and freedoms, it becomes clear that if these breaches of our rights are allowed to go on, we will be living in a country of fear and oppression.
One of the foremost reasons the government is monitoring the populace is to discover those people in the general public that are involved in major crimes or terrorism activities. Many supporters of state surveillance are of the view that in order to discover those people involved in major terrorist or criminal activities the government must actively monitor all of its citizens through the use of surveillance. Since the government casts such a broad net of monitoring, they are using citizens as a means to an end. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, leaked classified NSA flies that expose mass surveillance operations carried out by the NSA (Greenwald, 2013)
Disclosures have shown that, until recently, the government regularly tracked the calls of hundreds of millions of Americans. Today, it continues to spy on a vast but unknown number of Americans’ international calls, text messages, web-browsing activities, and emails. It appears that the police now have a device that can read license plates and check if a car is unregistered, uninsured or stolen. Little did you know that the National Security Agency can go into your Facebook page and . And it not surprising that almost every store we go into now a day wants your home phone number and ZIP code as part of any transaction. If you’ve ever lost an iPhone, you may have used Apple’s “Find My iPhone” feature to remotely activate your phone’s GPS signal. I remember one time I was looking for a job on the internet for almost a week but couldn't find what I wanted. Then one random I started receiving random texts from this number trying if the right job for me which was sort of weird. But now I know about the NSA,which is spying on Americans, collecting data on phone calls we make, it's not as if we should have been surprised. We live in a world that George Orwell predicted in
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.
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
The government’s use of surveillance and metadata collection has greatly increased since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Many Americans feel that this increase in surveillance is violating their privacy rights and the Constitution. The government can, and should, do everything it can to protect the lives and freedoms of its citizens. The National Security Agency is not violating the Constitution by electronically collecting information from American citizens, and the data collection is necessary to keep Americans safe by preventing future terrorist attacks.
The National Security Agency, known as the NSA, is a government organization that was founded in 1952. They started spying on US citizens after the September 11 attacks, under President Bush, to try to prevent more attacks. Now, the NSA is collecting metadata, the data that is about data, and actual data, so that they can try to stop terrorists and other criminals (“Mass”). Although the NSA is trying to stop the criminals and terrorists, most of the time, they are unsuccessful. The NSA is fundamentally incapable of achieving its goals because of the endless nature of the internet, the incompatibility of the NSA’s actions with its ideals, and the negative stigma that the NSA possesses worldwide.
The government gives each American citizen a set of unalienable rights that protect them from the government’s power. These rights cannot be broken, yet the government violates the Fourth Amendment daily to find ways to spy on the American public under the guise of protecting against terrorism. In 2007 President Obama said the American administration “acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our securities – it is not.” Americans need to understand that their privacy is worth the fight. The people need to tell their neighbors, their congressmen, and their senators that they will not allow their internet privacy to be violated by needless spying. American citizens deserve the rights given to them and need to fight for the right to keep them by changing privacy laws to include Internet privacy.
citizens through its existence as a secret collection of the countries information. Mid-1945, a director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush, “conjured up the future of big data and the so-called Information Age”(“Price”). Approaching the end of World War II, there was an unexpected appearance of spying through the government. The technology was beginning and led to recent inventions that would have the ability to monitor and keep track of an individual's information. After the traumatic terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the government confessed to launching a “domestic wiretapping initiative”(“Weinstein”). This was done through the U.S. intelligence organization, the National Security Agency(NSA). The organization tracked phone calls and emails “into and out of the U.S. involving suspected terrorist affiliates. The program bypasses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, created after government spying abuses in the 1970s”(“Weinstein”). The U.S. government took advantage of their spying techniques by utilizing them after the attack. While the program avoided the court, it was able to bring security through the government. The NSA protected the secrets and information of the U.S. government to break into the lives of suspects. This power brought efficiency and effectiveness to a distressing