NSA Spying

The threat of terrorism creates a fear that allows government agencies to subvert the United States Constitution and common morals out of the threat that they will be unable to combat terrorism without performing these rights violations. After the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, 2001, the United States Congress passed the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act (“NSA Surveillance Programs”). This act essentially gives a blank check of domestic and foreign rights violations to the federal government, specifically the National Security Agency, as long as the violation is done in the name of fighting terrorism. Reports came out numerous times over the next decade, specifically December 2005, May 2006, and March 2012, detailing how the National Security Agency was able to stretch its powers, even beyond this liberal and controversial bill, to surveil its citizens’ private phone conversations with neither warrants nor provable suspicion of a crime taking or about to take place (“NSA Surveillance Programs”). The former of these reports was by the New York Times, which had known for nearly a year about this program but

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, an American public was shocked, flabbergasted, and lost for words for the first time since Pearl Harbor. Out of these fears the PATRIOT act was conceived; promising to help stop future terrorist plots the bill was initially met with high praise from the public and media. It was not for another decade that the side-effects of the patriot act were revealed to the world. The American public was appalled at the circumvention of their fourth Amendment rights. Still there is a clear divide between those who believe that the National Security Agency Is not violating the constitution and what they are doing is good for the betterment of the country and those who believe that their privacy and undeniable American freedoms were violated in part of the NSA spying with both parties bringing their own views and ideals to the field. The September eleventh attacks were the beginning of the end of privacy for American citizens the PATRIOT act which was signed a month later granted full access to the phones and computers of the people. It took over a decade for the public to become aware of the illegal spying that the NSA had conducted. The NSA spying is a complicated and controversial matter while there have been several judicial courts that have ruled against the spying there has also been just as many cases of the court 's finding the spying constitutional.

Rand Paul, of the Wall Street Journal states, “How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon” (Paul)? Verizon is an enormous phone company that covers more than 308 million people. All of the phone information secured in the Verizon Company, is now being monitored and viewed by the US Government, which was initially kept secret from the people, under code name PRISM (Greenwald). The information under this code name was then leaked by a former NSA worker. Unfortunately, just like the book Big Brother’s Watching, it is the U.S Government that is conducting domestic surveillance on Verizon. Companies like Verizon, can’t simply shut off the eyes the government and they also cannot protect their users, now violated, Fourth Amendment rights. The use of domestic surveillance by the American government must not be implemented, in order to prevent the violation of American’s Fourth Amendment right, to ensure privacy for the American people, and due to American’s distrustful views toward domestic surveillance and the NSA. The U.S government should not monitor its people, and should not violate their rights to privacy.

“In an interview with Edward Snowden it was said that Obama was defending the unjustifiable and he knew it ”. This backs up the fact that “governments seek nothing less than total social control” . Snowden also said that the “NSA hack everyone everywhere ”.

After the disclosures by Edward Snowden turned a critical eye to the NSA many people questioned the legality of the acts. The NSA claimed that their work was legal and had prevented many terrorist plots. However, evidence of only four plots was ever found. Even if the acts were founded in law, they still angered large numbers of citizens. Many citizens do not care if the spying is legal, believing that it is morally wrong. Government surveillance organizations have grown to be extremely powerful and are capable of accessing large swaths of personal information; these abilities intrude into the private lives of citizens and need to be curtailed.

There is precedent for Snowden’s charges, as the court that supervises and manages the NSA spying decided that the agency’s domestic pursuit violated the Fourth Amendment’s constraint against arbitrary searches and seizures “on at least one occasion” (Kelley, 2013). The documents have also been validated assertions made by other whistleblowers, and increase genuine questions about the justice and honesty of what looks to be extensive lawless surveillance with dishonorable oversight. Georgetown law professor Laura K. Donohue wrote in the Washington Post, “As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained

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 National Security Agency (NSA) is an United States intelligence organization that is responsible for global monitoring and collecting foreign data intelligence. Within the NSA, existed what was called the “PRISM”. PRISM was created to collect private electronic data belonging to users of major internet services like Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, and so on(Stroud). A successful example of the NSA’s efforts with government surveillance was present in the case of Najibullah Zazi. Zazi’s plan to bomb Times Square and New York’s subway systems, was arguably the most serious threat on American soil since the September 11th, 2001 attacks. The NSA had helped to disrupt Najibullah Zazi’s plot to bomb New York’s Times Square and subways in 2009. Thanks to PRISM, law enforcement were monitoring an e-mail address known to belong to an existing member of Al Qaeda. Zazi e-mailed that email address and unintentionally revealed himself and his plans to the authorities. He was arrested and faced a life sentence in prison. Without this type of surveillance, Zazi could have successfully murdered thousands of American citizens(Sullivan). The NSA proved to the United States that without monitoring, America would have encountered another national catastrophe. Subsequently, government surveillance was immeasurably acknowledged among U.S

Officially given its name on the fourth of November 1952, the National Security Agency was developed to ensure the safety of American citizens (Howe 11). In an effort to prevent any unauthorized spying on innocent civilians a court known as FISA was created in 1978 to regulate the NSA. Up until the events of September 11th, 2001, the NSA was used strictly as a tool for foreign investigation to decipher international communications (“Frequently Asked Questions About NSA” 1). Twenty-three days after the Twin Towers fell, President Bush passed the Patriot Act (“Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying” 16). This act ushered the NSA into a position of limitless capability. Millions of Americans are having their personal lives followed, tracked, and recorded into mass data pools. This unethical acquisition of personal information is in strict violation of the Fourth Amendment. Immediate action must be taken by the Government to return the rights assured by our Founding Fathers and the Constitution.

The role of FBI in terms of a threat to civilian rights in American culture defined a major countermand to Roosevelt’s less aggressive view of espionage and the way it should be conducted outside of wartime methodology. In fact, it was not the CIA that sought to aggressively spy on Americans and non-Americans alike, but the FBI under Hoover’s leadership that defines the dangerous role of unlimited powers to secretive spying agencies in the post-WWII era:

United states have Constitution federal republic and presidential representative democracy. That power is balanced between the federal government and the governments of the states. THe US constitution give citizens rights and protects our right is U.S N.S.A spying is violating the 4th Amendment. It’s taking Americans privacy. People in U.S feels unsafe and controlled. They feel like they are getting watched.

Preview your Main Points: In “Making Sense of Snowden commentators write that, “US Congress is already debating an Intelligence and

Do you ever want the government spying on you without permission? This is what the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S) is doing to you because of an act that passed 45 days after the 9/11 attack. The Congress had to rush the act since they fear more attacks will happen, and was quickly passed without votes. In fact, homeland security is against our civil liberties (personal freedom). My partner and I believe that homeland security in the United States should be controlled by the government because it is against a lot of amendments in the Constitution, and popular sovereignty (citizen’s power).

While working for the NSA, Snowden became aware of their extensive trespasses against the privacy of U.S. and international citizens alike. Upon considering the extent of these trespasses, Snowden felt that it was his moral duty, as he stated, “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them”. His provided information showed the use of Internet surveillance programs, and the evaluation of phone records in the form of “metadata”. Many argue that Snowden’s leaking of information has hindered our government’s ability to intercept terrorist plots, by informing the world of the NSA’s capabilities, and therefore allowing terrorist groups to plot attacks beyond the reach of U.S. surveillance. In light of this, Snowden’s leak has indeed made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but does this justify the NSA’s chosen use of power? Since Snowden’s revelations, it has become evident that the NSA consistently uses their surveillance abilities to unjustified ends. One function of the NSA’s electronic data analysis is to find targets for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command to strike with lethal drone attacks. Many innocent civilians in middle-eastern countries have lost their lives as a result of this military sect’s reliance on the NSA’s data, rather than human correspondence. According to an anonymous former drone-operator, the victims of these attacks “might have been terrorists, or they could have been