NSA Surveillance Paper

The majority of U.S citizens believe that the government spies on everyone’s and anyone’s emails and that they intercept phone calls, text messages, and social media. But, in fact, the NSA has certain rules and laws set in place in order to make sure they don’t do such a thing. The NSA also doesn’t intercept everyone’s email, phone calls, texts, and social media, they only investigate certain people that they believe may pose a threat to the peace. In an article regarding if the NSA was acting within the law, stated,”The National Security Agency's collection of telephone and other communication data has been done entirely within the law; Americans are not being spied upon. The country's various intelligence programs operate with strict oversight and accountability, and those who work in such agencies are committed to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans" (Clapper para. 1). This proves that the NSA isn’t spying on everyday Americans, but, in fact, protecting the privacy and the liberty of

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.

Government surveillance is frowned upon by many Americans but it is used to keep its citizens safe. Citizens believe this method of protection is used to spy on the innocent citizens of America for the government’s personal use. There is no evidence that the government has misused authority to track its citizens but it is still not accepted. Americans feel the fourth Amendment rights are being violated but the NSA says this is not true. The data from the cell phone towers are collected in a bulk, they constantly express the fact that the NSA does not want every citizens data ("How the NSA Is Tracking People Right Now." The Washington Post. WP Company, n.d. Web). A problem to this solution would be for the government to publicly televise the

After laying low for about 20 years the NSA was called back into the spotlight. According to Heiligenstein “In 2002 the NSA started a project called ‘data mining’. This was where they were digging through electronic data Also in 2002 George Bush allowed the NSA to warrantlessly wiretap American citizens phones. In 2007 this program would come to light and be dismissed after social pressure.”(P. 21-23) In 2013, Edward Snowden who had worked for the NSA revealed countless documents and stories of the things the NSA were doing with out the American people knowledge. He revealed that the NSA had been gathering million of phone calls, texts and emails without permission. It and it also exposed that the US had been spying on it allies for

In Conclusion, clandestine surveillance programs run by the United States government are Orwellian in nature and are becoming out of hand The NSA’s Prism, XKeyscore, and Dishfire programs should be extremely regulated because they overstep the boundaries or personal privacy, do not adequately protect the data they obtain, and impede on the basic rights given to Americans in the

The National Security Agency of the United States has created a confidential surveillance program named PRISM, operating as the world’s largest “Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management”. This program is designed to gather and process “foreign intelligence” that travels through the United States, by extracting data from some of the world’s largest tech companies and its users. The United States describes itself as the “Worlds telecommunications backbone”, which was explicitly listed in the leaked PowerPoint presentation of PRISM’s operation. By going undercover and secretively accessing file transfers, e-mails, videos, call logs and numerous other types of data, the United States government is enabling a watch dog on its citizens and creating the largest terrorist regime. These PowerPoint slides behold some very disturbing information in how U.S citizens are being deprived of privacy, leading to loss of agency. Restricting individuals to be watched all the time turns the human race into robots, as individuality is lost, and liberty and freedom begins to diminish. America’s justification for surveillance and spy activity since 9/11 was to fight terrorism and protect the population, but these documents have nothing to do with capturing foreign terrorists or improving national security. They are a means of control, and instead of indicating those as the elected and the elector, meaning that congress and this government was only created through the

Is the NSA justified in their internal security monitoring on the American people? The National Security Agency is an intelligence organization that works for the federal government of the United States of America. They are responsible for collecting, monitoring and processing data and information around the globe in an effort to eliminate terrorism. The issue with this process is they are collecting data and information from cell phones, emails, computer programs and any other electronic device the American people use. The scandal broke 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 Americans, leaked by Edward Snowden (“BCC”). The

We all value our privacy, and we all know that privacy can conflict with other important social values. However, in this increasingly digital and technological world, we are more susceptible than ever to government intrusion of our digital communications and data. This came to light in June 2013, when former National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden revealed thousands of classified documents detailing the intrusive mass surveillance and bulk data collection of the NSA to journalists and subsequently the American public. As a result, widespread distrust and questioning of the American government’s data-collection programs grew among American citizens and bipartisan leaders who were also subject to the surveillance apparatus of the

Thesis: In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed into law the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (“FISA”) to limit the power of the Executive Branch for the secret surveillance activities. Hence, to protect citizen privacy, FISA requires the government to attest that "the objective" of the surveillance is to gather foreign intelligence information. However, the difference between electronics surveillance conducted for national security and law enforcement purposes erected a “wall” in information sharing amid the Intelligence Community. There is an ongoing debate about the lack of information sharing to

For years the government has been secretly committing surveillance. The FBI places wiretaps, monitors calls, and reads emails of millions of people. Whether they are trying to catch thieves or prevent terrorism, spying is a part of everyday life for the people of the United States. Before, this surveillance was committed in secret, with no one but the governments knowing what, and why it is happening. Then, in the 20th and 21st centuries, people began to find out. From the Pentagon Papers in the 1970’s, or recently Edward Snowden publishing papers about NSA surveillance, people are shocked and outraged by the new knowledge that we are not as anonymous as we think (Vilines, 1). Government surveillance has lowered citizen trust, increased

Data is a crucial job for an IT industry to secure. It is hard to keep information secured there's many factors. How secure is the Network and encryption? What about physical security is there any ports or fiber optic cables that can be exploited? How fragile is the data that needs to be secured? Based on this risk check list Brazil and the European Union are going to lay down their own fiber-optic line on the oceans floor to stop data from getting routed through the U.S. (Goldstein 24-27). There might be some data given to the server that helps aid the user on a website. What this might look like is shown in Figure 1. Metadata

The National Security Agency has installed a software in about a hundred thousand computers all over the world that will allow them to hack and spy on personal computers without being connected to the internet. This software has been used since 2008 but violates the basic right of privacy because the software is secretly installed into the computers. The amount of information that the government will be able to access is very overwhelming and concerning to many American citizens. Most information that can be accessed includes email, cell phone calls, texts, browsing histories, bank transactions, and location. Besides the risk of a person’s personal information being exposed to the public, this can develop many other serious issues in our world.

Countless United States citizens have been in an uproar over their right to privacy over the course of the last decade. This is due to the recent discovery of government agencies such as the NSA (National Security Agency) using methods such the recording, screening, and/ or intercepting of private phone calls without the caller's consent. For obvious reasons, people are upset with this practice, as it is undoubtedly a breach of privacy, but after the events of September 11, 2001, there is no denying that such practices are effective and completely justifiable in the case of homeland security.

In fact, American surveillance has been around for hundreds of years (Hadley 1). It has benefited the safety of the United States, but now safety is costing Americans a little bit of their freedom. According to Lynn Reaser from Point Loma Nazarene University, “The sacrifice of a small amount of security may well be worth the benefit of saving lives.” (Roger 4) To Reaser, the ends justify the means when it comes to government surveillance. Senator Susan Collins makes another great point to consider when she says, “One of the most egregious misinformation points that have been made is that the NSA is listening to the content of calls made by Americans to Americans” (Collins 1). In other words, the NSA isn’t listening in on everyone’s personal phone calls, just the suspicious ones. Barack Obama himself even assured America that there are laws in place preventing the government from getting irrelevant information (Hadley 2). People like to have a pessimistic attitude towards government officials, assuming that the worst will happen, but the majority of the people in government are good people (Volokh 3). According to these people, the government is respecting the privacy of Americans and at the same time saving innocent

Did you know that every call you make, every purchase you make online, and almost anything else you do on the internet is recorded and stored on government servers? It’s scary but very true, unfortunately. It has been released in recent news that the US government has been spying on not only its citizens, but also other nations. The revelations started last summer and more and more has been uncovered since then. E-mails, texts, pictures all other sorts of data is mined and collected by the government for years now.