Spying From Space For A Long Time

The government is always watching to ensure safety of their country, including everything and everyone in it. Camera surveillance has become an accepted and almost expected addition to modern safety and crime prevention (“Where” para 1). Many people willingly give authorization to companies like Google and Facebook to make billions selling their personal preferences, interests, and data. Canada participates with the United States and other countries in monitoring national and even global communications (“Where” para 2). Many question the usefulness of this kind of surveillance (Hier, Let, and Walby 1).However, surveillance, used non-discriminatorily, is, arguably, the key technology to preventing terrorist plots (Eijkman 1). Government

Now that after America and the Soviet Union where both partaking in the space race they both had suspicions about each other. Eisenhower, on the other hand, saw satellites as “pointless unless they provided something useful back on Earth” (DeGroot 5). “ A spy satellite, on the other hand, could provide accurate pictures of Soviet military capabilities, thus enabling the United States to spend its defense budget wisely, without wasting huge sums on challenging phantom forces” (DeGroot 5). America was worried about the Soviets spying on America because of security issues so America wanted to pursue on building themselves a satellite to “provide accurate pictures of Soviet military capabilities” (DeGroot 5). The only problem was that “ Flying over another nation’s territory without permission was, however, illegal under international law. What was not clear was whether the law applied to satellites” (DeGroot 5). America and the Soviets were in a battle to see which world power could be the best. The

The use of surveillance is becoming increasingly evident around the world. Surveillance is carried out in many different forms from simple methods such as video surveillance to more complex methods such as call and browser monitoring. Although it might seem that surveillance is undeniably convenient when pursuing a criminal or preventing a terrorist attack, it is often misused and many are beginning to question why there

Today, electronic surveillance remains one of the most effective tools the United States has to protect against foreign powers and groups seeking to inflict harm on the nation, but it does not go without a few possessing a few negative aspects either. Electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence has likely saved the lives of many innocent people through prevention of potential acts of aggression towards the United States. There are many pros to the actions authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) pertaining to electronic surveillance, but there are also cons. Looking at both the pros and cons of electronic surveillance is important in understanding the overall effectiveness of FISA. [1]

Technology has come a long way since the early 90’s. With modern advances, technology is just about incorporated in everything we do in our day-to-day lives. Since technology has been incorporated into our everyday lives, it may raise some concerns about what may be happening in the background. One of these concerns would be privacy, we all may take it for granted but it is our constitutional rights as Americans. But this all changed after the September 2001 attack on the twin towers.

The issue of the NSA surveillance would not be happening if it was not for the plane crashes of September 11th, 2001, an event that could have been prevented if the government had taken the measures of surveillance it has today. The effectiveness of the NSA’s programming today could have pinpointed the people carrying out the plans to aboard the planes and take control during that time. As an enormous country, it can be helpful to know where threats stand and where they don’t. As President Obama stated in his NSA reformation speech,

Mass surveillance is a word that has been thrown around every so often in the last few decades, especially ever since George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although this book was released over 60 years ago, some aspects of the book are seeming to become true in the United States, and other parts of the world today. The idea of mass surveillance isn’t so taboo anymore, as there are several programs ran by sovereign countries around the world which monitor their domestic citizens, as well as citizens and leaders of other foreign countries. With all of our technological communication advances since 1949, this age of information is only going to get more severe, and more tracking and monitoring will be done. The biggest offender of doing

It is important to realize the dangers of government surveillance; personal information containing sensitive details about an individual 's private life put in the wrong hands or otherwise used incorrectly could potentially have disastrous repercussions. In today 's interconnected world, everything that is said and done online is

After WWII, the US and the Soviets were superpowers. As space and rocket tech advanced, both countries set out to getting to and controlling space. Thus, the US and the Soviets entered Cold War, a time of spying that led to space race. Both countries wanted to spy on each other, but didn’t want the other to know what they were doing, so they started trying to put “scientific” satellites in space so they could spy on each other. The satellites could flyover the other country and it would not be bad. While to the most people, the satellite program was only for science, both the US and the Soviets knew that it would be used for spying. It would be safe from attack, so it could observe anything on the ground. Also, in the US, space was looked at as the next frontier, the next step of the American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much of an advantage to the Soviets.

"The National Security Agency (NSA) has become infamous among conspiracy theorists and those who do not trust the government at large. Theorists claim that the NSA is 'watching them' through their Internet activity, and while this may have been based around a factual occurrence, the situation has been blown entirely out of proportion. According to Wikipedia, the NSA ""is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes"". This does not mean that the government is watching someone ogle cat videos on the Internet. It means that they are collecting valuable information that could potentially prevent a catastrophe from targeting the United States.

“Even before the first satellite was launched, U.S. leaders recognized that the ability to observe military activities around the world from space would be an asset to national security… Intelligence-gathering satellites have been used to verify arms-control agreements, provide warnings of military threats, and identify targets during military operations, among other uses” (Space Exploration). During an age when nuclear threats loomed upon both the U.S. and the USSR with frightening reality, it was crucial for intelligence agencies of both nations to gather as much information as possible about the other’s missile programs and operations. This created the demand for orbiting satellites that would send back crucial information. Another benefit of orbital satellite reconnaissance was the low risk involved. In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane flying over the Soviet Union on a reconnaissance mission was shot down by the Soviets. “The Soviets managed to shoot down Powers's U-2 and capture the American pilot” (U-2 Affair). The pilot was imprisoned, CIA operations were revealed, and the U.S. was under a huge international embarrassment. Launching satellites does not risk losing human lives, leaking secret information, or losing national integrity during unexpected occasions such as the U-2

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.

Even now – after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers – spying apologists say that the reports are “exaggerated” or “overblown”, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys. In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications. For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail. The government is spying on you through your phone … and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off.

The cause of terrorist attacks like 9/11 tragedy the government has ramped ups the security and surveillance of the activist, journalist and dissidents. It is no secret that the government are able to have assess of people phone call records and text messages but for that reason that, activists avoid using telephones, instead they use tools like Skype. Which they think they are immune to interception but they are wrong. Over the last years there has been an industry of companies who provide surveillance technology to the government, technology that allows the government to hack into computers. Rather that intercepting the commutations as they go over the wire, instead the government now hacks into your computer, enable your webcam and your microphone and able to steal and look through documents from your computer. In the article “ Quasi- Constitutional Protection and Government Surveillance” by Emily Berman argues “ The government may collect and analyze unprecedented amounts of information about U.S persons’ communications, but without concomitant safeguards against infringing on individual privacy” (781). According to this, it indicates that all the access the government is able to see and how it is invading American’s privacy.

Throughout the ending of World War II, it was made obvious the Communist-controlled East and Capitalist West needed their intelligence organizations overhauled and prepared for an actual physical war. To have knowledge of what an opponent is capable of developing makes it easier to counteract and outperform them. To obtain intelligence is to have an advanced knowledge, which is why intelligence collection was revolutionized during the Cold War. Throughout the Cold War, the United States’ most successful intelligence came from satellites. Signal intelligence was probably the most