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The Patriot Act was hastily passed just a month later October and it severely limited the privacy of Americans and gave unprecedented power to the government and private agencies to track innocent Americans, turning regular citizens into suspects.5 In addition, the great technological evolution and emerged of social media that occurred round the same time, and shortly thereafter, created the perfect storm for the emergence of the largely unregulated surveillance society that we live in today.6 The result is digitization of people’s personal and professional lives so that every single digital trace that people leave can be identified, stored, and aggregated to constitute a composite sketch of ourselves and its only getting worse. In 2008, passed the FISA Amendments Act, which expands the government’s authority to monitor Americans’ international communications, in addition to domestic communications.7 In short, after 9/11 the U.S is left with a national surveillance state, in which “the proliferation of government technology and bureaucracies that are able to acquire vast and detailed amounts of digital information about individuals with minimal or no judicial supervision and often in complete secrecy,” giving the government and corporations with access to the data that the government compiles the ability to single

The general public gives an problem with the government surveillance as a media for invading others privacy. With the government monitoring, collecting, and retaining people's personal data, one side would claim that it is an infringement of their freedom to the rights to privacy. While the National security associations justifies the reason for monitoring would be to maintain order. Their ways to maintain order would be to monitor criminal and terrorist activity and to detect incoming threats, terrorists, or problems that would harm their country. This issue shows that freedom cannot exist without order. Although the general public wants their freedom of their privacy, they can not achieve their most of their desires because it puts their lives at risk without protection. Order is necessary in order to have freedom. It is impossible to attain entire freedom for a cause, however, it is possible to attain freedom to a certain

In 1974 when President Truman signed the National Security Act, which recognized the intelligence community and required congress be “fully informed”. In 1956 President D. Eisenhower establishes the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to counsel the White House on the quality and adequacy of intelligence. 1976 President Ford establishes the Intelligence Oversight Board to advise the President of the legality of intelligence activities. 1977 The House of Representatives establishes the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was not intel 1991 that congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, requiring the President to inform congress in writing of all covert actions undertaken by the CIA. Then the attacks of 9/11 happened and in July 2004 the 9/11 Commission released a public report of approximately 40 suggested reforms, several of which were to improve Congressional oversight of intelligence activities. The committee also stated that congress was most responsible and their dysfunctional oversight of intelligence was always dependent on newspaper headlines. This leads to January 2007 when the House responds to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations by establishing the House Appropriations Select Intelligence Oversight

During the past decade, an issue has arisen from the minds of people, on which is more important? Privacy or national security? The problem with the privacy is that people do not feel they have enough of it and national security is increasing causing the government to be less worried about the people. National security is growing out of control which has led to the decrease in people’s privacy and has created fear in the eyes of U.S. citizens. “Twelve years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and amid a summer of revelations about the extent of the surveillance state built up to prevent others, leaders, experts and average Americans alike are searching for the right balance between security and privacy” (Noble). Americans should be able to live their daily lives without fear of an overpowered government or a “big brother” figure taking over. “According to a CBS News poll released Tuesday evening, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said they disapproved of the federal government’s collecting phone records of ordinary Americans in order to reduce terrorism” (Gonchar). While it is good to keep our country safe with security, American’s privacy should be more important because there is a substantial amount of national security, the people 's rights should matter first.

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

Many Americans do not realize that at any time of the day the government could be observing their “private” lives. On the other hand, some individuals have predicted the government would develop a form of constant surveillance, like George Orwell who forecasted a futuristic government, which used technology as a relentless eye on the members of the society in the novel 1984. 1984 was correct, to an extent, in predicting that the government would increase their usage of technology to constantly observe their people, whether in public or their private homes.

Over the past few years, government surveillance in the United States has become a widely debated issue with two completely different sides. The National Security Agency, a government agency known for it’s efforts in spying and surveillance, has been at the center of this issue since it’s founding in the 1950’s. The Cold War had just begun and the United States government was doing anything they could to find potential terrorists and communists. In fact, many famous people including Einstein were being spied on by the government to find citizens with potential ties to the Soviet Union. (New York Times - New Details Emerge from the Einstein Files; How the FBI Tracked His Phone Calls and His Trash) As the cold war came to an end in the early 90’s, NSA spying seemed to come to an end as well.

* Nixon approves plans to greatly increase intelligence gathering agencies, such as the CIA and the FBI, but then decided to rescind the operation on July 23 1970

On October 26, 2001, George W. Bush signed the Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, better known as the Patriot Act, into law (“USA Patriot Act”). This act gave the National Security Agency and the US Department of justice the power to monitor domestic and international electronic communications. The goal of the act was to give federal and local agencies the power to monitor communications in order to prevent a terrorist attack. With the Patriot Act in effect, agencies could easily share information with each other without any restrictions. While the original intent was to allow federal agencies to monitor communications networks, the wording granted local agencies the same power. The Patriot Act was used to conduct domestic criminal investigations as well as counterterrorism operations. It was intended to be used as a way to prevent a major terrorist attack, but the Patriot Act had some controversial sections that gave the government certain powers.

Up until this point, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, applied to surveillance for domestic threats (Surveillance). However, this act now “stipulated that government officials have the authority to ‘intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to terrorism, computer fraud, abuse offenses’” (Ambrose and Brinkley, 498). For the first time the “CIA could spy on American citizens within the U.S. borders” (Ambrose and Brinkley, 498), and for the first time, Americans were forced to trade their liberty for some sense of

The USA PATRIOT Act, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, was passed shortly after the attacks of 9/11. It was signed by President George W Bush because he believed that the act would help America bring a halt to terrorism. However, in his efforts to track down terrorism, the act also violated American privacy rights.

The Patriot Act. Signed by George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, this act provided the government permission to spy on Americans. NSA can now monitor phone calls, emails, bank and credit report records, and Internet activity.

However, critics challenged the constitutionality of FISA and the abuse of the government power under the First, Fourth and Fith amendments of the United States Constitution. The problem led to the erection of “the wall” that inhibited the information sharing between the intelligence and law enforcement communities. The expansion of FISA after the enactment of USA PATRIOT Act significantly broadened the authority of the Executive Branch for the electronic surveillance and removed the wall, allowing the flow of information among Intelligence Community in the fight against terrorism. However, the removal of the wall led to the tension between national security and civil liberties. The FISC review has clarified the requirements for the use of intelligence under FISA to limit abuse of the Executive power. However, much is still needed to be done to properly balance the national security concerns and privacy rights. Consequently, the role of the Congress as an oversight machine is strongly required to limit instances under which the Government may conduct unlawful electronic

Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance of Act of 1978 (FISA), with aims of curving the foreign intelligence abuses that occurred under the Nixon and Johnson administrations. This also established the Foreign Intelligence Court (FISC) to review applications for surveillance, search orders, and the like. In 2001, after the September 11th attacks, Congress amended FISA in what is now called the Patriot Act.

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.