Pros And Cons Of Edward Snowden

I’m watching you. I can find out where you are, who you are with, and even listen in on your conversation. If someone came up to you and said this you could call the police and get a restraining order, but that will not work here because it isn’t a person doing this to you, it is a government agency. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the power hungry National Security Agency has used terrorism as an excuse to ignore the American people’s rights and is collecting information illegally on everyone. They claimed that they are collecting information to protect us from terrorism. Like the song All Fall Down states “ I 'm coming to hunt you down” (Wagner, 2011), even if you have never done anything wrong. However, they have desired this power

The NSA has many ways to collect information on every single person, even if they didn’t do anything. They will record the participants, duration, and approximate location of the participants, and they have access to every text and email that you sent or received. Those are just the ways that they collect data on every single person. If you get randomly chosen they can spy on you in many ways “The NSA can identify individuals’ friends, companions, and social networks, intercepts personal webcam video and pictures, use radio waves to hack computers that aren’t connected to the internet, install a fake SIM card in a cell phone to secretly control it”(A list, 2014), these are just a few of their numerous methods of surveillance. This illegal surveillance is justified because of terrorism being a threat to the USA, and the NSA says that their techniques are used to stop terrorism. The NSA is collecting all this data for many reason. The NSA has wanted to use their ability to spy on the American people for a long time, “We’ve been under surveillance for more than a decade” (Francis, 2013). However, the main reason that they state is that they are using it to stop terrorism and protect not only the USA, but the entire world,

When Edward Snowden exposed the NSA spying on everyone there was not a known amount of terrorist attacks, which lead to the general statement of “Online surveillance has been effective and is an important tool in the fight against terrorism”(Francis, 2013). Years later, and once the NSA was a huge topic for the media the NSA bragged about how they stopped 54 terrorist attacks. Even this is misleading because of those 54 only 13 were in the USA. They also used the term “terrorist attacks” very loosely, because as John Oliver stated, “the bulk cell phone data collection has stopped one terror plot… a San Diego cabdriver who… provided $8500 to… al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia” (Snowden Interview, 2015). He then stated that this terrorist group had no connections or plans to the USA, so even if he had funded them, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Some people might argue that since 911 we have not had a major terrorist attack on US soil, which would imply that it is working. A terrorist attack like 911 has never taken place before and hasn’t happened since. Also the NSA spying programs would not have been helpful “we already know that more NSA spying would not have stopped 9/11; most of the needed information was already held by the U.S. government and was simply not properly shared or acted upon”(Van Buren,