Reflection of an Interview on Public Opinion of US National Security

​The intimidation of specific groups in the society is reinforced by not only the leaders but also by the people. In a study by the Pew Research Center after the June 23 leaks shows that while most Americans are concerned with the level of privacy and government intrusion, most consider it acceptable if the surveillance is only directed to foreigners as shown in figure 2 (Rainie, n.p).

In society today many citizens feel violated with the security methods taken by homeland security. “On September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States marked the beginning of the global war on terrorism. The methods used are justifiable as they provide protection against possible threats or attacks. This attack on U.S. soil increased surveillance of both American citizens and foreign nationals” (Andrew, C., & Walter,

The interview went good, for the most part. I got enough information to form an essay and had everything I needed for the rest of the assignments, although

It has been more than seventy years since the release of George Orwell’s 1984, a novel that imparts a lesson on the consequences of government overreach. However, today that novel reads like an exposé of government surveillance. Privacy and national security are two ideas competing for value on a balance; if one is more highly valued, the other carries less weight. Government desire to bolster national security by spying on its own citizens-- even the law abiding ones-- is what leads to the inverse relationship between civil liberties and security. In times of a perceived threat to the nation, national security becomes highly prized and people lose privacy. One case is terrorist attacks. 9/11 caused an understandable kneejerk reaction in Americans to bolster protection. Some of the the measures taken were observable, like greater security at airports, but others attempted to increase national security in a more intrusive way. Privacy should be more highly valued than national security, and America has reached a point where that is no longer true.

The shocking tragedy on September 11, 2001 altered the course of American national security. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, homeland security was rarely debated as a hot topic, even within the small circle of policy elites (Kamarck, 2013, p. 34). The only prior homeland attack on America was Pearl Harbor and this was not on U.S. mainland. Many Americans were shocked that such a tragedy could occur on American soil and they are still shocked to this day. People are still recovering from this tragic event. The government knew that the country’s enemies still posed an enormous threat to the nation’s security. In response to the events that took place on 9/11, the United States Congress passed the USA/Patriot Act, which intensified the surveillance powers held by the federal government through the National Security Agency (NSA) and other federal agencies. This act increased national airport security procedures, metro security in most major U.S. cities, and extended the government’s capacity to spy on citizens.

The United States has increased its surveillance through programs by the National Security Agency that collect and examine data on Internet and communication by Americans. Innocent civilians are tracked in search of international terrorists hence sparked the debate on civil liberties over national security. However, according to Thomas Friedman, there was the need to shift from ‘war on terrorists’ to ‘war on terrorism’

The past several years have been a turbulent time for the United States. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001, the American government appears to slowly be transitioning into a police state, with major domestic surveillance programs and a heavily militarized police force. A police state, defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “A totalitarian state run by means of a national police force, using repressive methods such as covert surveillance and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment to control the population.” While it would be erroneous to call America a totalitarian state, the existence of wide-spread surveillance programs accompanied by the increased power of the American police force, and along with a significant portion of the population

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 defend the country from outside risks. They can gather anything from people’s phone data to their browser history and use it against them in the court of law. Since the catastrophes of the 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 approve that the NSA should be strengthened and others who think their powers should be limited or terminated. Although strengthening NSA surveillance may help

“The horror of September 11th brought all these issues to the fore. Across the political spectrum, Americans recognized that we had to adapt to a world in which a bomb could be built in a basement and our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away. We were shaken by the signs we had missed leading up to the attacks, how the hijackers had made phone calls to known extremists and traveled to suspicious places.

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

How would you describe this interview? Did it go well or were there any problems you encountered? Please describe:

This research paper examined the issue pertaining to the question of National Defense versus American’s civil rights. In this paper I examined the conflict that often occurs between citizens’ rights and national security in the United States (US). I realized through my courses in homeland security, there is often tension between citizens’ rights and US national security. I discovered that many civil liberties have been violated, as they relate to national security. Even though these liberties have been infringed upon before September 11, 2001, it has become a highly debated topic after the events that took place on that date. I used sources, such as the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required

The United States has a set of political institutions empowered to, among other things, defend the nation's common good. Defending the common good requires espionage and other forms of state secrecy. In the post-9/11 world — a world in which we know that terrorists, acting independently from governments, will do everything in their power to inflict maximum, indiscriminate harm on the United States and its citizens — defending the common good will require a degree of domestic as well as foreign surveillance. [The Week]

Thesis Statement: “Citizens of this country should value the national security more than their privacy since it is concerned with a much larger group of people in order to protect our country from invaders, to maintain the survival of our country and to prevent airing of criticism of government.”