Case Study: Is Your Big Brother Spying On Other Families?

Today, electronic surveillance remains one of the most effective tools the United States has to protect against foreign powers and groups seeking to inflict harm on the nation, but it does not go without a few possessing a few negative aspects either. Electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence has likely saved the lives of many innocent people through prevention of potential acts of aggression towards the United States. There are many pros to the actions authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) pertaining to electronic surveillance, but there are also cons. Looking at both the pros and cons of electronic surveillance is important in understanding the overall effectiveness of FISA. [1]

The NSA, or National Security Agency, is an American government intelligence agency responsible for collecting data on other countries and sometimes on American citizens in order to protect the country from outside risks. They can collect anything from the people’s phone data to their browser history and use it against them in the court of law. Since the catastrophes of September 11 attacks, the NSA’s surveillance capabilities have grown with the benefit of George W. Bush and the Executive Branch (Haugen 153). This decision has left a country divided for fifteen years, with people who agree that the NSA should be strengthened and others who think their powers should be limited or terminated. Although strengthening NSA surveillance may help the

The United States government’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has caused them to believe they are justified in amassing a collection of American phone records, which creates a breach in many American citizens’ privacy. According to the FISA Amendment Act, the government has the authority to “target foreigners abroad” (ACLU) and the phone records of any communications between Americans and those foreign targets can be collected. However, this act does not allow amassing

The National Security Agency (NSA) has been an information gathering arm of the Executive branch since the Cold War and continues to be an essential part of ensuring the security of the United States. The public issue that involves the NSA is the spying of U.S citizens which can be seen as a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This was revealed to the public by the whistleblower Edward Snowden who released classified documents of activities that the NSA had been conducting in conjuncture with telecommunication companies, which angered many U.S citizens and received media coverage with a call for the U.S Government to restrict the NSA’s activities or at least for there to be Congressional oversight. This debate revolves around how much the NSA’s surveillance activities are actually used for national security as well as the constitutionality of the NSA’s surveillance. This all began after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 when there was a call for the attacks to never happen again and the adoption of the Patriot Act in that same year which increased the power of the NSA.

This paper will outline portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, how said portions are unconstitutional and how they have been largely ineffective. The paper will also discuss how the federal government needs to adopt a more transparent system for how federal agencies collect intelligence. Citizens of the United States should not be treated like terrorist suspects without probable cause. The federal government should only legally target those persons who are suspected of terrorism and not spy on every U.S. citizen who uses phones and email to communicate.

Mass surveillance is a word that has been thrown around every so often in the last few decades, especially ever since George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although this book was released over 60 years ago, some aspects of the book are seeming to become true in the United States, and other parts of the world today. The idea of mass surveillance isn’t so taboo anymore, as there are several programs ran by sovereign countries around the world which monitor their domestic citizens, as well as citizens and leaders of other foreign countries. With all of our technological communication advances since 1949, this age of information is only going to get more severe, and more tracking and monitoring will be done. The biggest offender of doing

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.

Dingwen Zhang English 3 12 August 2016 NSA Surveillance NSA Surveillance: Is safety worth losing freedom? Recently there is debate about if it is okay for the United States government to spy on citizens using NSA and FBI. This became common knowledge when Edward Snowden leaked millions of documents that show the government is spying on the public. The United States government should not keep the NSA surveillance going because it hurts the public more than it keeps the public safe.

Spying on American citizens is now a common method employed by the government striving to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. Nonetheless, since its incorporation, the Act has been controversial as politicians and citizens alike have argued between the need to keep society safe and abusive powers of the government over its citizens. Although, mandated to serve as

In “How the NSA’s Domestic Spying Program Works,” the author reveals that many of “aspects of the (NSA) Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.” The author develops his thesis by detailing a few examples of major telecommunication companies that share customer’s call records to the NSA (AT&T, Sprint) and explaining that programs were implemented to monitor the emails of citizens (“amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day”). The author uses examples of how NSA decisions were made without a “warrant or any judicial oversight,” in order to increase citizen awareness of how the NSA functions. The author uses a erudite tone to address the audience of Americans

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 was a result of “congressional investigations into Federal surveillance activities conducted in the name of national security” (Intelligence Surveillance Act, n.d.). FISA allows for judicial and congressional supervision of foreign surveillance, while maintaining the “secrecy necessary to effectively monitor national security threats”, and outlines the procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence information (Intelligence Surveillance Act, n.d.).

The National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless collection of metadata has been questioned on constitutional grounds. Specifically, the NSA’s program has been argued to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which states that all citizens are to be free from any unreasonable search or seizure. Proponents of the NSA’s collection of metadata believe that it is a crucial tool in preventing terrorist attacks, while opponents of the program believe that its questionable constitutional validity, along with its lack of clear success in preventing a single terrorist attack, leaves the NSA’s metadata collection program in desperate need of reform or outright abolishment.

This action taken by the President and the NSA was a breach of trust between the government and American citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes Warrantless Wiretapping to be a wrongful exercise of power and a violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution (ACLU, 2006). Similarly, according to the rule of US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, “The President of the United States … has indisputably violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and accordingly has violated the First Amendment rights of these plaintiffs as well. (ACLU, 2006)” Written in the Constitution, the First Amendment gives American citizens the right to freedom of speech while the Fourth Amendment gives the right to privacy (United States Constitution, 1776). Any violation of the Constitution is without doubt an abuse of the Presidents’ and Congress’ authoritative power (Greengard, 2010). Following the first failed anti-terrorism project, President Bush and Congress developed another plan to make the United States

In today’s world, privacy is a massive topic of debate and worry specifically with the ease of access that the world wide web delivers in addition to the security that can be breached whether it be through a personal computer or mobile device. Topics of security and privacy range from trusting an e-commerce site with your credit card information, text messages and phone calls being secure, thieves stealing credit information, Facebook messages being shared, and if those worries are not enough what about our “Big Brother” the Government? The Government has become notorious for intruding on personal privacy, particularly with the recent foreign and domestic threats that the United States faces and has faced since the tragic events of September

Data can be collected through human sources, satellites, wiretapping, signals, and internet traffic. However, intelligence organizations must be in compliance with the law to ensure that they are not illegally collecting information (Chesney, 2012). Collection occurs because a threat is likely to occur or agencies are trying to find out what information our foreign adversaries possess about the nation’s assets. Intelligence collection occurs in both domestic and foreign territories. Intelligence agencies collect information about foreign adversaries in order to exploit their weaknesses or vulnerabilities (Gentry, 2008). Furthermore, government agencies and political leaders want to discover which of the nation’s assets are seen as vulnerable to the enemy (Gentry, 2008).