Essay On NSA

“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” This quote is from George Orwell’s book, 1984, written in 1944 about domestic surveillance. This quote has become all too real in today’s technology-idolizing society in which our freedom of speech and the security of our digital thoughts and papers are constantly put at risk by the government, particularly the National Security Administration. The NSA conducts wiretaps and digital surveillance without the acknowledgement of the majority of citizens and without constitutional evidence to do so. Although the NSA must appear before Foreign Intelligence

The two main things the Patriot Act meant for the NSA and domestic surveillance was that it made it significantly easier to get the FISC’s permission to do a wiretap or search and digital data without the need of a warrant and also gave the NSA permission to search tangible items such as receipts and credit card information. Because the Patriot Act does not require the NSA to have a warrant granted by FISC, the act in itself is unconstitutional because it would be impossible to have probably cause on every citizen of the United States. “The Patriot Act's other modifications updated FISA for modern technologies, such as allowing surveillance of a single target suspect, rather than requiring a warrant for each individual phone line, cell phone and e-mail account,” (Yoo and Posner). The Patriot Act gave more leniency to the already in power Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 which was the original act that began wiretaps and domestic surveillance. “FISA… created the system… that allows the government to place covert wiretaps on or intercept the e-mails of those suspected of presenting a national security threat to the United States,” (Yoo and Posner). Although the FISA was constitutional, the Patriot Act of 2001 is the time when it became constitutionally questionable to the citizens. The act was said to be to prevent terrorism but according

40% of respondents stated that it is acceptable for the U.S. government to monitor American citizens (“Americans' Views of the Likelihood the Government Is Conducting Phone and Email Surveillance”). These statistics raise the question of whether the American people are actually aware of the events taking place and the monitoring being done by the National Security Agency. If 63% percent of the people who responded to this survey are unaware of the searches being conducted on their digital data, then there is an issue of communication with the citizens about government surveillance. This is a major issue caused by the NSA not wanting to share the information they collect and the secrecy of everything they do and continue to do. Before 2013, the American people were completely oblivious to the PRISM surveillance program which allowed the NSA to unconstitutionally search nearly every major web provider. “It's the super-secret program to surreptitiously sweep the Internet for audio, video, photographs, emails and web searches from nine major US Internet providers… in hopes of detecting suspicious behavior that begins overseas and may be tied to terrorism” (Knickerbocker). But the reality of this is that it was created in secrecy without the knowledge of the citizens. While it is understandable to work in