Over the last several years, cyber attacks have been continually rising. This is in response to emerging threats from rogue nations and terrorist groups. They are increasing their attacks on government, military and civilian installations. According to James Clapper (the Director of National Intelligence) these threats have become so severe. It is surpassing terrorism as the greatest challenge facing the nation. In response, the National Security Agency (NSA) began conducting surveillance on those who are involved in these activities and others which are threat to US national security interests. This program became so broad; it started continually collecting phone records and emails on ordinary Americans. This angered many, who felt that the US was acting in a way that circumvented established legal guidelines and procedures. To fully understand what is taking place requires focusing on the event, the government 's response and the ways it did / did not meet our national security goals. Together, these different elements will illustrate what occurred and the lasting impacts on everyone. (Greenwald 2014) The NSA program on surveillance began in 2001. This is when Congress authorized government officials to listen in on the phone calls and emails of those individuals suspected of engaging in terrorist activities (via the USA Patriot Act). It is designed to ensure that the intelligence community and law enforcement have the tools they need to track / monitor those suspected
Domestic Surveillance in the Unites States has been going on for decades without the public 's knowledge. Domestic Surveillance didn 't seem important in the eye of the American government. After the September attacks (9/11) congress started to treat Domestic Surveillance as a number one priority. After September 11th Congress passed a law to use military force for those responsible for the attacks in New York, NY. The go ahead with using military force did not give the President to use surveillance without a warrant. Congress started to pass legislation against counterterrorism efforts. The most controversial measures, including the 2001 USA Patriot Act that gave the US federal government the ability to collect and analyze private information that has identified itself with the United States of America.
Whether it is calling someone on your phone or online shopping on the computer, people are more connected than ever to the internet. However, a person might be oblivious to the fact that they are being watched using these technologies. The NSA (National Security Agency) is an intelligence organization for the U.S. to protect information systems and foreign intelligence information. Recently the NSA has been accused of invading personal privacy through web encryption, tracking, and using personal information for their own uses and without permission. The surveillance of the NSA produces unlawful invasion of privacy causing an unsecure nation.
However, their efforts stepped up significantly after the terror attacks that occurred on 9/11. After 9/11, the government was on high alert for anybody that could be a potential terrorist. The NSA quickly began spying on foreigners suspected of being involved in terrorist activities or associating with potential terrorists. (Wikipedia - Mass Surveillance in the United States) Soon after this, they started intercepting phone conversations and even internet traffic through a program known as PRISM. This program was kept secret for quite a while until NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents to reporters. (PBS - How Edward Snowden Leaked Thousands of NSA Documents)
Since September 11th, 2001 the NSA has been monitoring public. This was the day of the terrorist attack on the twin towers, the day the NSA was formed. It was originally created to help prevent these types of attacks from happening again, but the surveillance methods were limited due to the technological disadvantages they faced compared to how far technology has come since then. Their main purpose has always been the surveillance of the public, by collecting all this information they can foresee these attacks before they happen which they will be able to stop, ultimately helping out the entire country by keeping the citizens safe.
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,
The US Constitution came to life 230 years ago, but recent actions of the National Security Agency is interpreted to be defying the Bill of Rights by the government and depriving the citizens their constitutional right to privacy. However, when posed with the question: Do people want to live in a surveillanced environment like animals in a zoo, with justice and safety ensured but privacy denied completely ? , the answers vary in the community. The revelation of the National Security Agency's massive
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 October 4 2001, President George W Bush secretly signed under his full authority, a executive order for “The Program”. After signing the order, the NSA then have full authority to monitor all internet traffic, and phone calls in the United States. After the NSA failed to prevent the 9/11, they set a new goal, which is to detect terrorist, and monitor their
The NSA is an agency that started surveillance on U.S. citizens and people around the world after 9/11 occurred to ensure the nation’s security. The goal of the NSA is to ultimately protect citizens of the U.S. and to keep a massive terrorist event from occurring in the country again. The NSA collected numerous amounts of data on people to find any type of threat that could lead to the distress of the country, but citizens were not aware of this surveillance. The NSA’s secret was eventually exposed and left not only U.S. citizens, but countries around the world outraged. As mentioned in the article, Edward Snowden: Leaks That Exposed US Spy Programme, by BBC News, “The scandal broke in early June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper
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.
NSA illegal surveillance: After the attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush authorized the NSA (National Security of America)’s domestic spying program, known in official government documents as the “President’s Surveillance Program.” Its aim was to conduct a range of surveillance activities, in which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between 500-1000 people inside the United States with suspected connections to Al Qaeda even though this had been barred by law and agency policy for decades. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother had the population under surveillance through two-way televisions. Likewise, the NSA spy on United State citizens by wiretapping, maintaining MARINA and PRISM, which are database and
The United States has a set of political institutions empowered to, among other things, defend the nation's common good. Defending the common good requires espionage and other forms of state secrecy. In the post-9/11 world — a world in which we know that terrorists, acting independently from governments, will do everything in their power to inflict maximum, indiscriminate harm on the United States and its citizens — defending the common good will require a degree of domestic as well as foreign surveillance. [The Week]
To look at the topic of mass surveillance one must first look at the rise of this type of surveillance in the United States and how it became a prevalent part of modern society. The National Security Agency was founded in 1952 and played a major role in United States intelligence throughout the Cold War. The NSA would really come into the foreground after the September Eleventh attacks in 2001 in which multiple terrorist attacks occurred on United States soil. Shortly after the attacks a piece of legislation known as the Patriot Act was passed which allowed certain government organizations to use means they deemed necessary to find and capture terrorist threats in the United States. The time following the passing of the
In June 2013, Edward Snowden—a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency—leaked confidential government information to the public through The Guardian by journalists that consequently published it on the Internet. In doing so, Snowden exposed the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spy programs that infringe upon the rights of American citizens, which has catalyzed legal controversy and skepticism towards the United States government due to the violation of privacy (Liu 2014). The Internet is a vast host for a plethora of information and communication between people; private activities and messages between people are not protected under United States laws, which can be exploited. The problem is seen in the NSA’s unwarranted
In January of 2014, news agencies reported on the National Security Agency's (NSA) use of “leaky” mobile phone applications to obtain private user information. The United States government has admitted to spying on its citizens, but claims that doing so is the best way to protect the U.S. from foreign threats. Certain smartphone applications, such as the popular Angry Birds game, inadvertently transmit personal user information, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status and current location, collectively known as the user's metadata, across the internet[1]. As part of their world-wide telecommunications surveillance for terrorism or other criminal activity, the NSA exploits these security holes in smartphone applications, by collecting and storing user data. While many users are unaware of the information leaks in their mobile applications, most people would certainly prefer to keep such information private [2]. Smartphones know almost everything about who we are, what we do, and where we go, but how much of that information does the government have the right to know and possess? Is it ethical for the United States government to collect and track the cell phone data of its citizens in the name of national defense, or does that violate the citizens' right to personal privacy? NSA surveillance of private user data of U.S. citizens is the best method of protection against terrorism and is also legal under the Constitution. By examining these two components, it is plain to