Domestic Surveillance Pros And Cons

The NSA or the National Security Agency carries out most of the domestic surveillance in the United States. Before the 9/11 attacks the NSA needed approval from a court, but after the attacks, they were given free reign to copy any data that possibly linked to terrorist activities. This led to many arguments over whether this collection of data was unconstitutional or not. The extent of this surveillance shocked many people; many civil rights advocates thought that this surveillance breached United States citizens’ rights. Because of the threat of domestic surveillance in the United States it should be decreased drastically but not entirely stopped.

Before the attacks on 9/11 the NSA required a warrant from a three judge court set up by

This wide range is intended to catch any communication between the U.S. and another country. If the data collected does not meet certain criteria the data would be destroyed. This sort of data collection tries to intercept terrorist communications, but sometimes many innocent Americans are spied on. Some examples of these types of surveillance have code-names Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium, and Stormbrew. These are mostly different operations within each of the the major communications providers such as Verizon and AT&T. Many of these types of companies may not want to help the NSA but due to a court order from the Attorney General they have to help the NSA (Alston, Wilton D). The NSA has these companies route them data that they think would be from or going to a foreign country. Then filters become placed over these data streams to search for any communications that might have to do with terrorism. Since the 9/11 attacks the filters in place have a much wider range than they did previously. The NSA says that they have systems in place to try to stop Americans communications from coming through, but some officials say that if they do collect this data they would not even need a warrant to do so. An agent at the NSA said that if a person of interest enters a chat room they gather all the intel they can on every member of the chat room.

An example of these is CCTV which sees use in many different countries. Some studies show that these cameras have no effect on the amount of crime but they record innocent people. Many people believe that being watched by a camera violates their rights. They believe that these cameras destroy their sense of privacy. Many of times when security cameras get installed it takes police officers off the streets of bad neighborhoods. Many cities in the United States want to initiate a British-style system. An example of British-style CCTV is in London, where there are around 150,000 cameras and the average civilian is caught three hundred times a day on these cameras (Crime and Criminals, 2010). Even though people are on camera this many times a day it has no effect on the amount of crime in the area. Studies done to test the crime fighting capabilities of these cameras have shown almost no effect on crime rate. In the forty-six studies done by the British Home Office showed that the cameras had no effect on the crime rate in troubled areas. Five of which of these studies were done in the United States (Crime and Criminals, 2010). Even police departments across the country that attempted to use surveillance cameras said that there was no definitive proof that the cameras helped to stop crime (Crime and Criminals, 2010). Some cities, however, do experience a drop in crime rate due to the addition of security