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National Security Agency

Decent Essays

The National Security Agency is a subunit of the U.S. Department of Defence and is the controller of the largest electronic and online surveillance programs. Given their authority from Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, the initial plans were for the NSA to be a regulated program, that had to go through a series of checks and balances in order to collect any information. It was also not intended for domestic use. On June 6, 2013, news outlets the Washington Post and the Guardian released the detailed reports that the NSA was going above and beyond the call of duty, but probably not through the best of means.

There has always been the question on whether the nation's Big Brother, was spying on everything we did. The NSA is essentially created for spying on people, for the nation's defense. When Edward Snowden released top secret government documents, brought to light how far the NSA was willing to go to achieve this goal. In a recent post by the Guardian, it was found that the NSA gathers more information than the Library of Congress (Macaskill, Dance). The Library of Congress is the largest in the …show more content…

His new rules, "allow the National Security Agency to share information it gleans from its vast international surveillance apparatus with the 16 other agencies" (Waddell). This allows other intelligence agencies to use NSA surveillance systems and expands the people who have access to unwarranted information. This means that the information gathered by the NSA will be accessible to other agencies, and these agencies will be able to pilfer through the data and collect what they may find pertinent to their own investigations. On one hand, this means there are more checks and balances on the information that is stored by the NSA, while on the other it means more people are able to invade the privacy of innocent people and their personal

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