NSA Pros And Cons

The age of intelligence has grown at an extremely accelerated rate over the past few years in the United States. After the events of September 11, 2001, when the terrorist group Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Centers in New York, the surge of surveillance of the American public increased drastically. Measures to ensure our national security were put in place directly after the attacks such as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the passing of the Patriot Act, and the rise of the National Security Agency, or NSA. The purpose of these decisions were to guarantee the safety of the American citizens from any act of terrorism. The products of this idea are something far from what the American citizens expected in terms of safety

Looking back on the results of these types of programs, many wonder if the government has truly had success with these programs The intelligence programs centered around the NSA have grown at such a drastic rate that issues have risen around the legal circumstances of spying, the effectiveness of the program, and the reach of spying inside the country and the rest of the world.

One of the biggest arguments is whether all of this is truly legal. The NSA and Barack Obama have both openly admitted to the collection of nationwide phone call and email data that is analyzed for our safety. Although this is done with the best intentions, critics will say that this is too far, as well as unconstitutional. These acts carried out by the government are “violations of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that ‘the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches

The growth of programs such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI in the United States have created a sense of security for many citizens, but critics suggest that these agencies have become too large for their own good. On December 25, 2009, a Nigerian man affiliated with Al-Qaeda named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to ignite explosives hidden in his underwear on a plane making its way to Detroit, Michigan. His plan was never executed and the accident was safely avoided, but it later came to surface that intelligence agents possessed information on Abdulmutallab that should have alerted them to this presence in the US. In a statement regarding the potential attack, President Barack Obama said “The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots” (Obama). Statements directly from the President such as this do not create a very convincing story that the US is doing a very good job protecting its citizens. In between all of the useless information collected throughout the day, it is very well possible that critical information such as this can be lost in the endless emails and phone calls from the average American. In July 2010, The Washington Post published an article outlining how large these agencies have actually grown. In the