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The Pros And Cons Of Surveillance Of The NSA

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"The Government began to become concerned with the United State’s national security after the events that transpired on September 11, 2001. The NSA began to monitor various forms of communication throughout the United States. Recently, after Edward Snowden released classified information about the NSA surveillance programs, the idea of monitoring internet content has become upsetting and worrisome to many. From monitoring phone calls to facebook posts, the government practically has access to it all. So what platforms should be deemed necessary for public safety and where should the line be drawn?
As American citizens, we are very obsessed with our privacy. For example, in other countries around the world, everyone is watched practically …show more content…

However, this issue is more complicated than just black or white. The Surveillance Law was founded by the George W. Bush Administration and was continued throughout Barack Obama’s presidency. The law allows a special legal regime for investigating matters related to “foreign intelligence”. The renewal of the Surveillance law bill was just approved by the Senate for another six years (Savage). This allows emails, texts, and phone calls to be collected by the government without a warrant. Therefore, with Congress’s new approval, the NSA’s actions are now legal. Whether these actions are considered constitutional though, are much a matter of opinion. According to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, one is entitled to the right of not enduring an unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant. Some may say that the monitoring of internet activity violates this amendment due to the fact that there is no warrant needed, and we aren't exactly sure of when the monitoring is occuring. But of course, this is up to interpretation. It is also hard to say that can something is unconstitutional when it has been going on for a significant period of time, and the actions have been approved by congress. Can something also be deemed unconstitutional, even if it is protecting our national security? It does not seem

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This act increased the federal powers imposed on the citizens in order to help their efforts towards investigating terrorists. These powers included telephone taps, internet taps, voice mail, grand jury information, immigration, money laundering, and crime. While these powers made it easier for the government to track down possible suspects of terrorism, it interfered with the people’s right to privacy. All the provisions under the Patriot Act can be used on the citizens with the approval of a court order. Furthermore, it interfered with the Fourth Amendment.

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One group that argues this is the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly disagrees with the Patriot Act. They have stated that investigations into the Patriot Act, “reveal thousands of violations of law,” (ACLU), while this is simply not true. One controversial piece of the Patriot Act are roving wiretaps. These allow government investigators to follow and put surveillance on certain people, rather than certain devices, so that they may save time and effort. According to Nathan Sales, a law professor at George Mason University, “Federal courts agree that Title III’s roving wiretaps authority is constitutional and… provides strong support for constitutionality,” (Sales).

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In 2001, following the most successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the history of the nation, the Bush Administration and Congress granted the National Security Agency (NSA) broad powers to collect both foreign and domestic intelligence to avoid a similar strike in the future. Ever since, the NSA has conducted covert measures to collect signal intelligence on a global scale. The extension of powers granted to the NSA has been met with significant controversy on both its legality and constitutionality. It is apparent that the NSA surveillance program is constitutional for citizens of the United States, because all stored data is encrypted upon collection, and warrants are needed to decrypt the stored data for review. However, the United

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Many of these concerns were given credibility in 2013 when NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked information showing that the National Security Agency was using the law to acquire the bulk collection of data related to millions of communications. “NSA cited Section 215 of the Patriot Act as justification for the program, which the agency said was aimed at helping to identify and track possible terrorism suspects. In addition, federal officials said that the special-purpose Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved the NSA's data-collection practices on multiple occasions. But in May 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that the program violated the Patriot Act in an opinion on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. The PATRIOT Extension Act expired as scheduled at the start of June 2015 after the Senate was unable to agree on a proposed extension.”

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Based on the principles of rights ethics, individuals have certain privileged rights and one of them is privacy and protection against invasion of personal rights and property. Individual rights can be moral, legal or ethical in nature and have to be respected by everyone, be it the person next door or the government. Thus, NSA’s interference into the personal lives of U.S citizens and foreign nationals, by collecting data without their knowledge, is nowhere near ethical or moral. If they had to do so based on so called reasons of “national security”, NSA should have disclosed their actions to the public and justified their mode of operation. Overall, national security is important so safeguard the nation, but at the same time, individual

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In 2001 after the tragedy of 9/11 President George W. Bush passed the PATRIOT Act. The act is supposed to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks, but what it's actually doing is defying most principles this country was founded upon. Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act enables the FBI and the NSA to listen to the phone records of millions of Americans. Not only is the government invading the privacy of millions, but the way it's being done is illegal. The government is invading on the personal lives of people who have never been suspected of being a terrorist.

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They claim that by ending phone record surveillance it is the start to successfully ending surveillance abuses by the government. They rightfully point out that the Act violates the privacy of millions of people by letting the government collect phone records and much more without any reason or evidence of a crime. This surveillance on everyone is not only unconstitutional, but also doesn't make us safer. Even though the government claims that the program has stopped terrorist attacks, these have been repeatedly disproven. Even the White House's own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has found no evidence that the program has made a difference in counterterrorism efforts. "

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The Patriot Act allows investigators to use the tools that were already available to investigate organized crime and drug trafficking. George W. Bush decided to create and push the Patriot Act as a way of protection for the people just 45 days after the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Bush placed this act in hopes that he would be able to prevent any types of terrorist or unsafe act from happening again. Today, people are quick to disagree with this idea due to the idea that they are being watched constantly. Although it is understandable, knowing that privacy is not considered when it comes to our personal lives, the government is just monitoring us to keep us protected.

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In conclusion, NSA’s digital surveillance shouldn’t be continued for following reasons. First, it’s against of laws and constitution. Retrieving information from digital space is considered as unreasonable searches, therefore it violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects all U.S citizens from unreasonable searches. It’s not legal either.

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NSA hides the fact that they are monitoring on US citizens without the warrant as they find some connection between the person monitored and some illegal activity to justify their monitoring. At first, after the 9/11, President George W. Bush started a program of mass monitoring of US communication. He had started it without FISA Court’s knowledge and when the population find out about this Congress had to create and enact the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 and inside was the crucial Section 702 that, by law, validates mass monitoring over the last 7 years. These communication monitoring systems rely on these two statutes: FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (Section 702) and Patriot Act (Section 215).

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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.

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The 4th Amendment of the constitution “prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be issued by a judge and supported by a probable cause” (constitution, par. 4). If this is the case then the Supreme Court will need to issue 8 billion warrants because not only does the NSA spy on us they also spy on other countries. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments act gives broad targeting guidelines for people outside of the United States. Due to this new Act, America is now allowed to spy on people in other countries if they have reason to believe that they are “suspects.” Based on a study of the largest sample of Section 702 data analyzed to date, approximately 90% of the text messages, emails, instant messages, and other communications retained by NSA, even after the application of minimization procedures, are to or from accounts who are not surveillance targets” (Laperuqque).

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In June, the Guardian revealed that “the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas.” ( Page 2 & 3, Glenn Greenwald) When it come to your own personal information it’s you personal freedom to have your

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On May 17th, 2002, a FISA court denied the Justice Department rights to monitor U.S. citizens (USA Patriot Act.). On January 23rd, 2004, the Supreme Court declares some parts of the Patriot Act unconstitutional (USA Patriot Act.). This meant that law enforcement had to change their tactics on observing suspected terrorists. Unfortunately, law enforcement and other security agencies were being caught breaking the law to find terrorists. In June of 2005, the telecommunication company AT&T admitted to allowing the government to illegally monitor millions of messages a second (USA Patriot Act.).

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In 2008, President Bush signed into law The FISA Amendment Act, an act which allowed the government to monitor Americans’ electronic devices. Bush claimed that this Act could help save lives, as mentioned before, but what he did not mention is that this allows the government to conduct surveillance without probable cause. (“How the NSA’s Surveillance Procedures Threaten Americans’ Privacy.”) When people heard about this, they became concerned, and many began to question if the NSA would abuse this power.

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