The Nsa 's National Security Agency

When the colonist were drafting the constitution they couldn’t have imagined the tremendous growth we have achieved today. With innovation comes conflict. Many citizens feel the United States gives an illusion of freedom. Today the biggest conflicts are centered on basic rights spelled out in the constitution. It’s no secret the National Association of Surveillance illegally obtains information from the electronic devices of United States citizens. The actions of the NSA violate the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendment rights. The NSA’s use of information impedes on the first amendment in terms of freedom of press. For a journalist the source is the key, and the key stays confidential. With the NSA collecting digital trails there is a higher risk for whistle blowers to be charged with criminal act or even assassinated. The courts stand by the NSA, for

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

NSA infringes on the 1st and 4th Amendment rights. America was the safe zone: a lot of people came to the United States so that they would have the freedom to express who they are, what they believe, and their thoughts without punishment. Edward Snowden, NSA whistle blower, wasn’t allowed that freedom when he made it know what the NSA was doing with Verizon’s phone records. Snowden did break the law but he brought awareness of this dilemma to the average citizen, villain, and hero. In the end, it caused the NSA to change some policies but it doesn’t even make a difference because still the administration continues to collect data without a cause. Correction: the NSA uses surveillance to protect United States of America from terrorist, terrorism and terrorism related crimes… The agency’s interpretation: anyone and anything under the sun.

As the late Frank Herbert once said, “Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Federal electronic wiretapping and supervision dates to the Wiretap Act of 1968, and has only increased in the following decades. Organizations such as the National Security Agency have been empowered by FISA (United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts) to bypass the authority of the Supreme Court in determining constitutional validity on searches. Government Surveillance is unjustified because it infringes upon personal freedoms, does not guarantee safety, and is not a vital necessity.

The United States government’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has caused them to believe they are justified in amassing a collection of American phone records, which creates a breach in many American citizens’ privacy. According to the FISA Amendment Act, the government has the authority to “target foreigners abroad” (ACLU) and the phone records of any communications between Americans and those foreign targets can be collected. However, this act does not allow amassing

Over the past few years, government surveillance in the United States has become a widely debated issue with two completely different sides. The National Security Agency, a government agency known for it’s efforts in spying and surveillance, has been at the center of this issue since it’s founding in the 1950’s. The Cold War had just begun and the United States government was doing anything they could to find potential terrorists and communists. In fact, many famous people including Einstein were being spied on by the government to find citizens with potential ties to the Soviet Union. (New York Times - New Details Emerge from the Einstein Files; How the FBI Tracked His Phone Calls and His Trash) As the cold war came to an end in the early 90’s, NSA spying seemed to come to an end as well.

Even with this Amendment in effect the NSA without warrants, still take data and store it. The NSA is known to use no-cause warrants, which discovered and reported by Original Guardian Report that the FISA court had been giving to the NSA. Edward Snowden the man who was charged with theft of government property and two counts of breaking the Espionage Act, was found to use these warrants that FISA gave him (5.1) .The Agency also obtains warrants to collect phone records of specific individuals and more, which is just abuse on the Amendment effecting the people of America (5.1). The warrants are achieved and allowed to get information on people or persons who have good reason to believe they are involved in terroristic activities

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, an American public was shocked, flabbergasted, and lost for words for the first time since Pearl Harbor. Out of these fears the PATRIOT act was conceived; promising to help stop future terrorist plots the bill was initially met with high praise from the public and media. It was not for another decade that the side-effects of the patriot act were revealed to the world. The American public was appalled at the circumvention of their fourth Amendment rights. Still there is a clear divide between those who believe that the National Security Agency Is not violating the constitution and what they are doing is good for the betterment of the country and those who believe that their privacy and undeniable American freedoms were violated in part of the NSA spying with both parties bringing their own views and ideals to the field. The September eleventh attacks were the beginning of the end of privacy for American citizens the PATRIOT act which was signed a month later granted full access to the phones and computers of the people. It took over a decade for the public to become aware of the illegal spying that the NSA had conducted. The NSA spying is a complicated and controversial matter while there have been several judicial courts that have ruled against the spying there has also been just as many cases of the court 's finding the spying constitutional.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has been an information gathering arm of the Executive branch since the Cold War and continues to be an essential part of ensuring the security of the United States. The public issue that involves the NSA is the spying of U.S citizens which can be seen as a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This was revealed to the public by the whistleblower Edward Snowden who released classified documents of activities that the NSA had been conducting in conjuncture with telecommunication companies, which angered many U.S citizens and received media coverage with a call for the U.S Government to restrict the NSA’s activities or at least for there to be Congressional oversight. This debate revolves around how much the NSA’s surveillance activities are actually used for national security as well as the constitutionality of the NSA’s surveillance. This all began after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 when there was a call for the attacks to never happen again and the adoption of the Patriot Act in that same year which increased the power of the NSA.

This paper will outline portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, how said portions are unconstitutional and how they have been largely ineffective. The paper will also discuss how the federal government needs to adopt a more transparent system for how federal agencies collect intelligence. Citizens of the United States should not be treated like terrorist suspects without probable cause. The federal government should only legally target those persons who are suspected of terrorism and not spy on every U.S. citizen who uses phones and email to communicate.

The Patriot Act is lengthy and encompasses many issues but its primary purpose was to protect the American Public. I will focus this paper to how the surveillance aspect affects the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and collection of Metadata.

On June 6, 2013, The Guardian published a story about the National Security Agency's (NSA) secret Internet surveillance program, PRISM (Greenwald and MacAskill 2013). The story was based on documents leaked by one of the most successful whistle-blowers in American history, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents that Snowden has released up to this time have shown the NSA to be heavily engaged in the collection of personal Internet activity, bulk collection of telephone "metadata," and other forms of surveillance that have brought U.S. intelligence practices into question.

The NSA’s program of collecting e-mail data is neither constitutional or legal. Though our Constitution does not extend its freedoms to those outside of the United States, the program still greatly affects the personal privacies of American citizens. A search warrant is needed to view any citizen’s e-mails, and from my knowledge and experiences, in order to obtain a valid search warrant from a judge, probable cause, and a strong certainty that evidence will be found in the area being searched, otherwise the warrant is invalid and cannot be issued; “searches are generally considered reasonable when…a judge issues a search warrant based on probable cause.” (2). This obstructs the rights every United States citizen is protected by under the Constitution.

One of biggest things that concerns critics is the conflict of the fourth amendment. They claim that this program violates the fourth amendment, which prevents unreasonable searches mentions Lee in the Texas Journal of civil liberties and civil rights. Issues and controversies claims, that by the NSA sweeping up metadata, they are invading our privacy, which is one of our most basic rights as American citizens. With the government having that much information and power, it can only spell trouble for the future. Critics are also quick to point out that obtaining the warrant to investigate is more than easily done by officials. Feingold explains that since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was passed in 1978, almost every request for a warrant was approved. Meaning that if the NSA wanted a warrant to wiretap, they were pretty much granted it. FISA also permits immediate wiretap warrant taps as long as the government goes to court for the warrant within 72hrs, adds Feingold. The NSA’s fine print fools many Americans as to what appears to the eye.

Disturbingly the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting metadata on Americans personal telephones and electronics devices for several years. This collection was happening before the NSA Analyst Edward Snowden leaked these facts to the world in late 2013. The NSA was formed in the 1950’s, and during this time frame the NSA disseminated intelligence information from electronic signals for foreign and counter intelligence purposes, which supported the American military needs. Currently the NSA has refocused their spying tactics to technology driven devices. The NSA has an extensive “telephone-metadata program, since 2001, and they collect phone records of virtually all Americans” (Lizza, 2013).