The Pros And Cons Of Mass Surveillance

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

On June 6, 2013 the details of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities where given by Edward Snowden to the public; raising concerns of Americans about their privacy. Edward Snowden, a former employee of the NSA, gave the alarming details of surveillance programs in his interview on how the NSA accesses our emails, calls, internet activity, and anything else that is related to technology. In this system of surveillance the NSA can gather data from companies and tap the cables that are vital for moving around information from technological devices, they may also use their relationships with technology companies to get emails or information straight from U.S. servers. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) Nevertheless, the claim is

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.

Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Intelligence Agency surveillance extension is some of the most comprehensive news in recent history. It has incited a ferocious debate over national security and information privacy. As the U.S government deliberates various reform proposals, arguments continue on whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor (Simcox, 2015).

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.

In “How the NSA’s Domestic Spying Program Works,” the author reveals that many of “aspects of the (NSA) Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.” The author develops his thesis by detailing a few examples of major telecommunication companies that share customer’s call records to the NSA (AT&T, Sprint) and explaining that programs were implemented to monitor the emails of citizens (“amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day”). The author uses examples of how NSA decisions were made without a “warrant or any judicial oversight,” in order to increase citizen awareness of how the NSA functions. The author uses a erudite tone to address the audience of Americans

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.

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.

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.

More and more people fight back against NSA surveillance. They are on the opinion that their personal information should be kept in secret. Moreover, a fair bit of organizations and even individuals unite together in order to react against such actions of NSA as they are afraid that vital information about them might become known for everyone and those NSA’s actions disturb privacy of organizations as well as ordinary people.

"I think this mass surveillance by the NSA was never about terrorism: It's all about economic spying & social control.  It's about POWER. (Ziad K. Abdelnour)  The National Security Agency (NSA) is responsible for protecting the United States national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information. Some of their tactics have been considered controversial and have been criticized by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU organization protects rights. The ACLU works,” to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the U.S.”

“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

Before the technological age, there were thousands of years in which the only way to record an image was to painstakingly spend countless hours painting it onto a canvas. Now, we have the ability to record video, in amazingly high definition, with a camera lense that is remarkably small. With the boom that technology has had, we have not been able to keep up with the laws that surround it. One such controversy, is the use of mass surveillance. We have been unable to decide if it is ethical to breach everyone's right to privacy in the name of supposedly preventing crime. After a careful analysis of the benefits and liabilities that mass surveillance brings, it was found that mass surveillance is a breach of people’s right to privacy, and is impractical in preventing crime.

“Home-grown” terror requires the collection of U.S. citizens’ conversations (Sulmasy). This means that conversations between innocent people must be monitored in order to protect Americans. Surveillance is important and useful to the public for its influence in the greater risk of catching criminals, law-abiding citizens feeling safer, and the possibility of recorded footage helping investigations and prosecutions (“Understanding the Benefits of Security and Surveillance.”). For this reason, many citizens feel safer knowing that government surveillance is watching and catching criminals, they don’t feel dissatisfied about a loss of privacy, because they know it is for their own benefit and security. The number of attacks and crimes that could be prevented is limitless, and the country would be much stronger without

The increasingly pervasive presence of surveillance seems a peculiar and increasingly urgent feature of twenty-first century culture. Discussions about the need for national ID’s, the presence of surveillance cameras on street corners, recent concerns about phone tapping and listening into people’s conversations had been reflected in the popular media in movies such as “V for Vendetta”. However, using Foucault’s work on Panopticism, surveillance has always been a feature of early and late modern culture. It is imposed on both individuals and societies in general and focuses on the surveillor, either through the single authority figure or via the larger infrastructure of government interventions. The movie and the Panoptic model questions