Analyzing Communication And Access For Private Data

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

In May of 2013 Edward Snowden leaked NSA documents revealing that the organization had been, warrantlessly spying on U.S. citizens, via the internet. (Britannica) The information leaked showed that the NSA had been tapping phones and monitoring citizen’s text messages, emails and social media. (NPR) Snowden has said that he brought these documents to light, not to discredit the government’s method, but to expose it’s methods. Snowden wanted to allow the people of the United States to decide for themselves. (Britannica)

The presence of national surveillance in the United States is a widely debated topic, and there are many positives and negatives to both sides. Although it has been operating for such a lengthy time, the true actions of the NSA were revealed recently in the Snowden Leaks of 2013. Many state that the NSA is good and necessary because they “have nothing to hide” and because it will prevent future terrorist attacks. However, others argue that the surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment and is useless. Even though there appear to be many pros of having the NSA operate as they currently do, they should be disregarded because such intrusive surveillance is unlawful, racist, and ineffective.

Unless you were hiding beneath a rock in 2014, you saw the nation’s reaction to the release of classified NSA documents by the infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden, who worked as the lead technologist for Dell, managed their accounts with the Central Intelligence Agency. It was in this position that Snowden began to notice some classified documents that didn’t make sense. These documents contained information on the National Security Agency illegally spying on their own citizens. It was at this time in 2012 that Snowden began downloading some of these files for himself. It is estimated that he downloaded somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 files on the espionage efforts of the United States (Borrough, Ellison, Andrews, 2014). Now, Snowden needed to get the files out to the people. He attempted to contact a few media outlets around the world who would not go through the trouble to follow his strict encryption methods. Snowden eventually contacted documentarian Laura Poitras, who had recently written an article on a separate whistleblower that caught Snowden’s attention. Poitras states in an interview with Salon.com that, “…he’d contacted me because my border harassment meant that I’d been a person who had been selected. To be selected –and he went through a whole litany of things — means that everything you do, every friend you have, every purchase you make, every street you cross means you’re being watched” (Carmon, 2013). This connect lead to Snowden being

In the aftermath of 9/11, the government came to the conclusion that their security efforts had not kept pace with technology. Consequently, they created what was formerly known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Government officials even made a confident assertion that if the program had been in effect before 9/11, the hijackers could have been identified and the attacks thwarted (CBS News). Out of fear and hysteria, the public demanded more security and in turn, the government brought forth an era of mass surveillance. But has it stacked up to its expectations? Till this day, research shows that no potent acts of terrorism have been prevented by the program (Elliott). Instead, the program had given birth to the most hawkish ethnic profiling campaign since the second world war, similar to the Thought Police in 1984 which Winston describes as follows, “how often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized” (Orwell 5). In addition to this, he brings up mass surveillance into focus as well, which has, in reality, been unsuccessful thus far identifying criminals (Elliott). To make this simpler, consider this common analogy to finding a needle in a haystack. The needle in this scenario is any potential threat, and the haystack is the entire population. It’s a logically supported inference that one will be able to find the needle quicker and more easily if the haystack were smaller. But with mass surveillance, more and more people

These words alone spark concern amongst citizens due to the methods and the limited understanding of what information is analyzed and stored. When Eric Snowden released the details of the domestic and foreign intelligence gathering programs of the National Security Agency (NSA), World leaders and citizens alike were surprised and outraged at the range and scope of the data that was collected (BBC News 2014). Although his actions were illegal in nature, they exposed the extent to which intelligence collection had grown beyond the initial scope and intent of the laws that were passed following

In recent years, "online surveillance has been effective and is an important tool in the fight against terrorism" (Francis) this is attributed to the efforts of the NSA. In this technological age, threats from foreign enemies do not always come from hand-to-hand combat but are rather cyberattacks. These types of threats can be more catastrophic. Online surveillance can also be a valuable asset in identifying individuals that pose a threat to national security. A large number of people, after the catastrophic 9/11 attacks, greatly fear the repetition of similar attacks, and rely heavily on the efforts taken by agencies like the NSA to stop attacks from happening again. Such efforts include online surveillance, reviewing of phone records, including those of U.S. citizens.

“Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded” Words uttered by this former NSA worker have never been so threatening to the privacy of the American people. Edward Snowden is a man who is sought after for informing that the United States Government is watching from the shadows. This exposure of new info did not come at a cost to Snowden; the judicial branch of our government as well as many of the government’s workers go after Snowden with threats of unfair trials and sometimes even violence, because of this Snowden was forced to leave his country and family. Through his actions, Edward Snowden has shed light on the spying technologies our government employs on us, as well as the depraved

In June of 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, exposed the world to the many shady practices taking place behind the closed doors of both the U.S. and U.K. governments at the time. The National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies within the United States, were using illegal tactics in order to spy on their own citizens in efforts to determine possible threats. What was so shocking to the world was the fact that these intelligence agencies were doing so on their own terms and were operating without the permission of the public. They were hacking into people’s phones and computers and reading private messages. When word of this leaked to the public, the United States began to panic, as they felt that their every move

In early June 2013, when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American citizens, the scandal broke. Edward Snowden was the source of the report. Edward Joseph Snowden, a computer expert, who used to work for the CIA of the United States turned into a whistleblower and exposed the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs. Before this case happened, most U.S. citizens had not known that their privacy data had been surveilled by government agencies. When law enforcement and intelligence agencies want to glean information, to detect or to prevent crime and terrorism, or to investigate them that have already taken place, they use surveillance.

In this essay, we stand in the negation of the Resolution: Mass surveillance is not a justified method of governmental intelligence gathering. We define the term “surveillance”, as the act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime, as does Merriam - Webster’s dictionary. We will have three main contentions. First: anti-terrorism, second: cost-effective, and third: it does not affect people.

Americans like to know things. With the most complex of information available with a simple Google search and breaking news updates instantly accessible via smart phones, the United States has adopted a culture that demands to know what is going on. That being said, it is no wonder Americans were outranged upon discovering their government had been discreetly monitoring their activity. The spark that ignited the controversy of mass surveillance initially arose in early 2013, when former CIA {Central Intelligence Agency} and NSA {National Security Agency} employee Edward Snowden “leaked information about the United States government’s highly classified mass surveillance programs” to journalists from several major publications, including the Washington Post and the Guardian (Edward Snowden).

Like every debate or dilemma there are two sides, the positive and the negative; the advocates and the opponents. In the dilemma of privacy verses surveillance, those in favour of government surveillance believe the government should be allowed to monitor and observe all public and private matters in order to gather security data, because they “believe in the primacy of security over privacy” (McNeil, 2016). Advocates also favour more government surveillance technologies and systems in order to target and prevent terrorist attacks, as many governments say that their surveillance technology “can be used to counter espionage efforts, hinder the spread of weapons of mass destruction and attacks-through terrorism” (McNeil, 2016). However those

Edward Snowden exposed NSA’s illegal surveillance in June 2013, this brought about controversial discussions inside America and all over the globe. However, we stay oblivious how this thirty-year-old school dropout advanced to become one of the most recognized critics of the government. Snowden is considered a patriot and a hero of the country, human rights movements like the ACLU and Amnesty International believe that Edward Snowden championed for the privacy rights of the citizens. (Greenwald, 2014) On the contrary, some people and the US intelligence consider Snowden a traitor to the state, the way he exposed the NSA was dubious and brought great risk to the international relationship of the US. Moreover, the state government accused him of breaching of information on the state.

With all the atrocities unfolding around us from the rise of ISIL to the recent Parliament Hill Shootings in Ottawa, it is easy for us to think - on impulse - that we need to do more to keep ourselves safe. It is easy for spy agencies to operate on the belief that they need to collect more of our information to fulfill their responsibilities. Indeed, the American NSA, the British GCHQ and many other intelligence agencies around the world have created mass surveillance apparatuses with unprecedented sizes and levels of sophistication. Unfortunately, mass surveillance is a step in the wrong direction. Though well-intentioned, these programs are principally unjustified, and have detrimental ramifications.