Terrorism: Safety vs Privicy

It was and is a sensible use of our comparative advantage in technology. It enables us to collect information that human intelligence has been unable to provide, given our difficulty of penetrating cells of radical Islamists, at home or abroad (Zuckerman para 3).

Privacy is what allows people to feel secure in their surroundings. With privacy, one is allowed to withhold or distribute the information they want by choice, but the ability to have that choice is being violated in today’s society. Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who sacrifices freedom or liberty will eventually have neither.” And that’s the unfortunate truth that is and has occurred in recent years. Privacy, especially in such a fast paced moving world, is extremely vital yet is extremely violated, as recently discovered the NSA has been spying on U.S. citizens for quite a while now; based on the Fourth Amendment, the risk of leaked and distorted individual information, as well as vulnerability to lack of anonymity.

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.

Some of the most contentious and recurrent argumentative dialogues regarding civil liberties stem from what seems at face value, like a relatively elementary idea the notion of personal privacy. This debate could never be more relevant than in present day society, where globalization and advanced communications technologies have synergized to form a ubiquitous digital library of shared information. The specific example of the delicate balance between personal privacy and national security here in the United States has only further convoluted the issue the debate of whether and to what caliber citizens have privacy rights is hotly contested. As technology

David Plotz’s essay attacks how people use the term “personal privacy”. In his essay, David Plotz exposes his personal information towards the audience in his introduction (67). He explains his purpose that corporations, stores, surveillance cameras, and his own computer can track where he visited (67). He also states that “privacy paranoia has become a national obsession”. In other words, people fear that the government is watching them, relating to the

Iraq’s Security Forces have been under scrutiny since ISIS began controlling Iraqi cities. The Iraqi Security Forces had 1,000,000 million personnel and had received $100 billion dollars in aid since 2006 (Al-Ali, 2014). However, ISIS is smaller in force and funds. ISIS has an estimated 20,000 troops and makes an estimated $1-4 million everyday (Gollom, 2014). The Iraqi Security Forces should have the ability and force to crush this terrorist cell, but astonishingly are being overrun by this terrorist cell. The Iraqi Security Forces face interior issues that cripple its ability to deal with military threats, and make the state vulnerable to internal and external attacks. Some of the most prominent issues affecting the power of Iraqi Security Forces is the early exiting of United States soldiers, Prime Minister Maliki’s policies, deep sectarian, and massive corruption throughout the military.

In contrast, Allen’s passion is to protect citizen’s privacy. She is eager to blame capitalism of the telecom companies. Allen presents a good argument about a case when a young woman was murdered and the cell phone tracking record of the suspect’s activities on the night of the murder, led to his arrest, not an actual call. She also has difficulty with the Justice Department warrantless wiretapping because getting a search warrant can mean dangerous delays (p1). Her concern is that the government can track a cell phone anywhere, even if not during an actual call.

The authors explore an issue at the very heart of the surveillance legitimacy, they seek to explain where the NSA derives authority to operate and collect data. They further examine the legal capacity to conduct such actions, absent traditional requirements of search and seizure, as defined by the Fourth Amendment of the

Many privacy violations are deemed justified because of the increasingly difficult war on terrorism, but that is arguably not a valid defense. “…privacy and safety are not conflicting parameters and that we must rethink our security legislation”

With new advances in technology each day it’s becoming easier to communicate with each other. Talking to friends and family around the world has now become easier. Yet with all these new forms of communication there have been unpleasant side effects, since this new advanced technology is not only for harmless interaction it is also used to plot against governments and countries. Governments have found themselves under attack and have had to resort to monitoring their citizen’s online and phone activities. The thought that the government is watching them is often very off putting for many Americans. They feel as their right to privacy has been

“What lingered was an understanding of the United States as a "surveillance society’: a new kind of social organization with the collection and scrutiny of personal data as its basic feature” (Igo, 2015). The government was and is always watching; no policy can change these privacy problems. As

Governments have always claimed that there is a trade-off between individual freedom and national security, that both can’t mutually exist in their full capacity. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 not only fuelled this argument for America but for other countries across the world. But this invasion of privacy in order to weed out the ‘bad guys’ really isn’t as effective or necessary as it's made out to be, and, if anything, poses potential harm to

The idea of privacy protection for private citizens is rooted in history back to the Magna Carta. With the passage of time and the evolution of communication the laws of the United States have attempted to ensure a balance between security of the nation and protecting privacy. The current state of privacy and the law is now in a state of flux as citizens have begun to rely more and more on technological means of communication and have integrated privacy invading technology into their daily lives. It is not uncommon today for the average citizen to have all their conversations and movements tracked and stored into massive electronic databases simply because they carry a cell phone. The use of the internet as a means of communication and

“Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing.” Billy Graham. Surveillance is one of the most troubling kinds of search because you never know when someone might be watching you. The first time that the American public became concerned about the government surveying and interfering with their private matters was during the Cold War. For more than thirty years the U.S. government engaged in surveillance of the everyday activities of some of its citizens. This illegal surveillance was often carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the name of national security, but the practice began to go too far and caused abuses of civil liberties and privacy. They argue that any small loss of privacy is far outweighed by the protection that citizens receive. Although many people believe we should favor security over privacy, privacy is our human right and it is our freedom; while security is still important, it hasn’t prevented major terrorist attacks.

In terrorist attacks, individuals or groups use violence to obtain political or social objectives through the intimidation of a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims (Santifort-Jordan & Sandler 2014, 981). If the terrorist attack is particularly shocking, then the terrorist group hopes that their malicious act will cause sufficient social anxiety that society will pressure the government to concede to the group 's demands. Suicide terrorist attacks, the execution of which requires the terrorists to sacrifice his or her life, have grown in number since the late 1990s (Santifort-Jordan & Sandler 2014, 981). According to Robert Pape (2003), suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but the most common explanations do not help us understand why. Terrorist organizations are increasingly relying on suicide attacks to achieve major political objectives. For example, spectacular suicide terrorist attacks have recently been employed by Palestinian groups in attempts to force Israel to abandon the West Bank and Gaza, by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to compel the Sri Lankan government to accept an independent Tamil homeland, and by Al Qaeda to pressure the United States to withdraw from the Saudi Arabian Peninsula (Pape 2003, 343). Furthermore, such attacks are increasing both in tempo and location.