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1984 By Edward Snowden: National Security Agency

1155 Words5 Pages

On May 2013, Edward Snowden released documents that shed light on years of top secret National Security Agency (NSA) activity. When the news coverage began, the public took heed and its influence was shown. 1984 by George Orwell increased in sales on Amazon by 6021% in the following days after the release of Snowden's documents. The book follows a character named Winston and the world he lives in. A figure known as Big Brother rules the country and surveillance plays a big part in the classic novel. Anything over the a dull whisper gets heard and the thought police take care of anyone not following the tyrants orders. This, however, is not how the US is today. Sure, there are themes and parallels you can draw from, but the US is still governed …show more content…

Illegal access to American communications has been happening since 1920. A government group was formed called the Black Chamber, they were granted access to the wires to spy on all messages coming in or out of the States. Access to information was on a much smaller scale back then, hence the reason they were able to remain undetected for 55 years. It started to fall apart once they started working with communication companies and internal government investigations began. The project was known as Project Shamrock and it was shut down in 1975. Three years following, new laws were put in place that would block this type of intelligence from happening without proper warrants and clearance. This made the type of spying they were originally doing almost impossible which is why the NSA stayed out of public surveillance for another quarter …show more content…

They built a new facility just for this purpose. He also revealed that the focus from hunting down terrorists quickly turned to internal spying on the public. After Snowden released his info to the public, it was proven that the NSA really did have access to and storage of billions of calls and internet searches (metadata mostly, but some content as well). Verizon, AT&T, Yahoo and Google were the biggest players in this illegal breach. The way they gained access to all this personal information was easier than you may think. Employees at the NSA with high enough clearance just had to add a name, email address or phone number to a list and all contact incoming or outcoming, would be intercepted and storaged. The fact that this is happening in the US is significant because of how much of a worldly connected country they are. Approximately ⅓ of all telephone calls enter and/or leave the United States at some point during the call. Also to this point, essentially 99% of the internet comes in contact with the States as well. This interconnectivity with the US not only makes the citizens of the US at risk, but countless international countries. When it comes to internet, almost no one on earth is

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