Safeguarding Personal Privacy

The debate between where to draw the line between allowing government surveillance and keeping society’s members privacy will never be completely clear. It is important to keep a part of an individual’s life private and once the Untied States voted the Patriot Act in privacy went from limited to microscopic. Widening the scope of government surveillance slowly but surely pushes privacy out of the

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 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

Lately, in the United States, the controversial topic of privacy has been rekindled by several occurrences, including the recent NSA surveillance scandal. When government actions are questioned, the

Total surveillance. Complete obedience. Absolute authority. The world of 1984 scared me when I first read the book last year. Never before had a book made me think so deeply about individuality, society, and government. 1984, a manifestation of my nightmares, described a totalitarian police state of resolute submission. The horror came when I looked upon our own society, and Big Brother glared back at me. We live in a world where every phone call, every text, every search, and every email can be monitored and recorded by our own government. The National Security Agency, or the NSA, was originally proposed to monitor threats outside of the United States, but the NSA began domestic surveillance shortly after the horrific terror attacks of 2001. This cleared the way for warrantless, unlawful tracking of American citizens. Initially, the program collected only the data of high-risk individuals in America with direct links to Al-Qaeda. Now, however, government data collection has spread to millions of otherwise innocent citizens. Government surveillance is a direct violation of the privacy of American citizens that is dangerous, immoral, and unlawful.

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

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

Government Surveillance Be Quiet! The NSA is Listening! After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the United States (US) improved and tightened their surveillance on US citizens.(NSA Surveillance Programs: Are National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs constitutional?)

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.

The primary goal of the government since its founding has been to ensure the safety of citizens. It has developed an array of methods, procedures, and systems to achieve that goal. Throughout the years there has been some form of criticism regarding its methods. The most recent cause for public disapproval and concern stems from government surveillance brought to the light by former contractor of the National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden. Snowden has brought attention to the surveillance being performed by the government that involves the United States. Surveillance could significantly deteriorate relations with other countries and destroy the trust that is held between the citizens and government leading to the collapse in stability and possibly the country itself. The potential for surveillance being used as a tool for the protection of citizens can prove to be monumental, but is vastly outweighed by the negative repercussions it could inflict if misused.

The NSA (National Security Agency) was established by order of President Truman. The decision followed the development in breaking German and Japanese codes during WWII that contributed to allied victories and successful missions. The NSA was a means of continuing code-breaking work of the post-war era (The NSA 2016). Henceforth, the agency’s focus has shifted from individual suspicion to a large systematic practice of collecting mass data. Pressure to reduce fear of attacks has led the federal government to increase surveillance to combat terrorism. In the last decade, it has become increasingly normal for civil liberties to be eroded and government agencies to spy on citizens to collect and store their personal information.

The leaking of documents by Edward Snowden beginning in June 2013 that revealed the surveillance operations of the National Security Agency, or NSA, drew international attention to the question of what governments can do in the name of protection and what crosses the line into unauthorized spying on citizens. It also drew many comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. After careful analysis of the novel it becomes clear that the NSA’s actions bear some similarity to the Big Brother of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but there are some crucial differences that prevent the United States from becoming the totalitarian society that Orwell warned against. Even though the mass surveillance that the NSA performs is more encompassing than what the Party was capable of,

Burch 1Brian BurchKendra GallosEnglish III21 May 2018NSA’s Domestic Surveillance ProgramSince the creation of the Patriot Act in 2001, millions of ordinary Americans have hadtheir data collected by the National Security Agency. The current problem of national securityand domestic surveillance started after 9/11. Shortly after the attack, the Patriot Act was signedinto law. The act expanded upon surveillance laws and allowed government agencies monitorphone and internet communications of citizens, without a warrant. The obvious question thatcomes from any terror attack is how many of our civil liberties are we willing to sacrifice toprotect national security. In a 2010 poll, 47% of respondents said they were more concerned thatgovernment policies

“The consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival” (Orwell). The world today is full of many dangers domestic and abroad. It has become a routine in the news to report on the daily mass shooting or update with the war on terror. We live in a world where being worried is justified; however, we should not give up our constitutional rights in the face of fear. The NSA’s dragnet surveillance programs, such as PRISM, are both ineffective and are surpassed by less questionable national security programs. The FISA court's’ approval of NSA actions are not only illegal, but exist as an embarrassing formality. Surveillance is a necessary