The Average Man Has Committed No Crime

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

Privacy is, and should continue to be, a fundamental dimension of living in a free, democratic society. Laws protect “government, credit, communications, education, bank, cable, video, motor vehicle, health, telecommunications, children’s and financial information; generally carve out exceptions for disclosure of personal information; and authorize the use of warrants, subpoenas, and court orders to obtain the information.” (Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment, 2008) This is where a lot of people feel as though they have their privacy violated. Most Americans are law-abiding citizens who do not commit illegal acts against the country, they want to go about their lives, minding their own business and not having to worry about outside interference. The fine line between privacy and National Security may not be so fine in everyone’s mind. While it is the job of government agencies to ensure the overall safety of the country and those living in it, the citizens that obey the law and do not do anything illegal often wonder why they are subject to any kind of search, when they can clearly point out, through documentation, that they have never done anything wrong.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act) is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to ever pass through the US Senate. Its critics use fear mongering tactics to scare people into opposition of an intrusive police state which they believe is inevitable given the government’s new powers. They consider the Act an assault on civil liberties and an invasion of the privacy of innocent American citizens. Yet the real issue is not that the government now has new powers, it’s that the American people do not trust our intelligence agencies to handle these new powers properly while still respecting their rights.

The horrific September 11th event, along with others, has changed the way people think about their privacy. The fear is so great that we are willing to trade off our privacy, in essence our freedom, for the sake of security. People argue that if they do not have anything to hide then why worry if the government is spying on us. Nonetheless, it is not about not having anything to hide. Simply, it is about

To begin, the USA Patriot Act allows the government to collect and store electronic data records. In the age of smartphones, almost everything is stored on your phone. For some, it’s their life. It’s commonly known that phones include sensitive information such as phone call logs, internet searches, transactional data, contacts, emails, text messages, ID, web page visits, voicemails, and your location. All these are not private—they probably never were—and are already being stored without your permission. Your information isn’t secure from the government, and can be intercepted at any time without a warrant through the Patriot Act. The day after September 11th, a poll was taken revealing that two in three Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to fight terrorism (Rackow, 2002, p.1651). The USA Patriot Act, which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act,” was created shortly after the attacks. Through a program named PRISM, the National Security

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

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.

The illegal surveillance of Americans was first discovered by the public in 2005. Since then, and before, many organizations were founded to defend civil liberties in our digital war such as the EFF. “Secret government documents, published by the media in 2013, confirm the NSA obtains full copies of everything that is carried along major domestic fiber optic cable networks. The reports showed-and the government later admitted—that the government is mass collecting phone metadata of all US customers under the guise of the Patriot Act. Moreover, the media reports confirm that the government is collecting and analyzing the content of communications of foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as collecting much more, without a probable cause warrant.”(EFF) NSA surveillance tracks the location of hundreds of millions of people, collects phone records of our entire nation, and taps into the very backbone of the internet. “The US government, with assistance from major

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.

On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck in the United States; 2,977 people died in the iconic terrorist attacks (“September 11th Fast Facts”). In New York, New York, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and another crashed into the Pentagon, which is the military command center located in Washington D.C. Along with those three planes, there was a fourth plane that was hijacked, but the passengers overthrew the terrorist, and downed the plane in Pennsylvania. These attacks resulted in racism against the Muslim community and government agencies that changed their goal to preventing another terrorist attack on the United States and its allies (Gould, Eric D., and Klor). One of these agencies is the NSA; NSA employee, Edward Snowden leaked top-secret information in 2013, regarding their spying program (Greenwald, Glenn). This caused great commotion all across the United States about people’s rights. However, the NSA is here to protect the United States and other countries from potential terrorist attacks. The NSA should be allowed to collect people’s communication records to bring home more troops and prevent terrorist attacks.

The majority of U.S citizens believe that the government spies on everyone’s and anyone’s emails and that they intercept phone calls, text messages, and social media. But, in fact, the NSA has certain rules and laws set in place in order to make sure they don’t do such a thing. The NSA also doesn’t intercept everyone’s email, phone calls, texts, and social media, they only investigate certain people that they believe may pose a threat to the peace. In an article regarding if the NSA was acting within the law, stated,”The National Security Agency's collection of telephone and other communication data has been done entirely within the law; Americans are not being spied upon. The country's various intelligence programs operate with strict oversight and accountability, and those who work in such agencies are committed to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans" (Clapper para. 1). This proves that the NSA isn’t spying on everyday Americans, but, in fact, protecting the privacy and the liberty of

Keeping the United States of America safe from foreign threats is far from an easy task. However, preventing domestic threats is a much more complicated and delicate one. Government organizations such as the National Security Agency [NSA] are known to have invaded our privacy through our connection to technology. The NSA has publicly admitted to the surveillance. Due to media coverage, the NSA is often viewed as the main agency that bulk collects data. Emails, phone calls, and even our text messages have been surveilled under an NSA program known as “PRISM” (“Domestic Surveillance Techniques”). Everyday government organizations invade our privacy for the sake of national security in an attempt to defend us from domestic threats, but it seems they often take surveillance a step too far. United States citizens should understand legality of these actions, as well as the purpose this data collection serves.

The US government needs to find a happy medium when it comes to surveillance. According to the ACLU, “Our Constitution and democratic system demand that the government be transparent and accountable to the people, not the other way around” (ACLU 1). Of course the government needs to protect the people, but at the same time the government needs to respect the privacy of its constituents. The government is violating the people’s rights to things such as rights to privacy, free speech, due process, and association (ACLU 1). These rights have been paid for through the blood and personal sacrifice of many brave men and women throughout American history. These rights cannot be surrendered so that the government’s job can be made easier. Security is important, but the rights of Americans are too hefty of a price to pay for it. Privacy, free speech, due process, and association are critical components of American society and without it, Americans’ lives and democracy are undermined. (Russel 3)

Americans’ natural rights are being violated right now, and the U.S. federal government is a huge entity with power beyond anything that was ever intended at our country’s founding. We have no privacy. We walk around with trackers, microphones, and cameras, all wrapped up in a neat bundle in our pockets, which the government uses to track every text we send, every phone call we make, every article we search — and people have stopped caring. People mention it, of course, it’s not like Americans pretend it doesn’t exist, they just don’t care. They make jokes on how we’re constantly being watched and continue to let themselves be violated by our government. I’m guilty of course, I still have a phone and the VPN on my computer doesn’t protect

Place yourself in the safety and comfort of your home, under the belief that “everyone has the right to the use and enjoyment of his property” (Department of International Law), searching, emailing, and talking about things that may be frowned upon by others. Now imagine the raw feelings of fear and deception that would wash over you upon seeing Edward Snowden’s statement on how “the U.S. government is destroying privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they 're secretly building.” You may initially feel betrayed, but Obama formally announced that the NSA acts solely in the name of safety right? Have we begun to sacrifice the freedom and