Privacy vs. Surveillance Essay

NSA Surveillance curriculum A Threat to Civilians Privacy Since the lineage of WWI, spying body process has become a very important part of theme security to get together States. To track the activity of population, U.S.A. has mevery spying agencies and National warranter Agency (NSA) is one of them. NSA is the main maker and manager of signal intelligence for the get together States. It collects, monitors, translates, and analyses global information, and selective information for intelligence purposes and performs management programs inside the United States. The activity of NSA and the bulge fall out of the covert of citizens has long been debated for decades. With advanced engineering and newly installed equipment it is possible to spy on almost everyone.Though the law enforcement authorizeds occupy the NSA command programs as necessary weapons in the war of terror, the civil rights groups claim that it is a clear violation of civilian privacy entertained by the C onstitution of the United States. The U.S. Constitution gives every U.S. citizen the right to protect their privacy. The quarter Amendment prohibits unreasonable reckones and seizures and sets out requirements for search warrants based on probable constitute as determined by a neutral judge or magistrate (U.S. Constitution). save the NSA argues that because of security reasons surveillance programs should be act and appeals to Congress non to limit the powers of NSA. afterwards the disclosures of the classified documents by the former NSA asseverator Edward Snowden, it has become clear that NSA willingly avoided legal system, conducted much broader surveillance program and did non abide by the Constitution at a least bit. The Guardian reports the greatness of the disclosure shocked many people, including the select representatives of the Congress who were unaw atomic number 18 of the extent of the surveillance.NSA conducts interior(prenominal) surveillance through a tur n of programs. The agency never publishes any comprehensive, official list of programs. The majority of the surveillance programs are classified, meaning that they are not available to public. The only reason people know about these programs is because of the whistle blower Edward Snowden who reveal classified documents after face-off Glenn Greenwald, a reporter of The Guardian. The first divulge classified document was about the sail Project, which contents shook the country. On October 2, 2013 The New York Times reported that NSA carried out a unfathomable pilot picture in 2010 and 2011 to test the collection of spate of data about the location of Americans cell screams. The earth of pilot project was as well corroborate by James R. Clapper, the director of topic intelligence, at a senate judiciary delegation hearing.The pilot project used data from cellphone towers to locate anyone who is using any electronic device which is Wi-Fi or cellular technology enabled. T his project was a dangerous violation of Fourth Amendment and has been highly criticized two by the lawmakers and U.S. citizens. As prof. William Stuntz, a flagitious justice scholar and a prof at Harvard Law School, points out the Fourth Amendment was drafted partly in reaction to the British Government in eighteenth century which carried out general warrants to seize ad hominem diaries and letters in support of seditious- besmirch prosecutions that were aimed to suppress semipolitical thought. The top secret documents reveal that the NSA is collecting and storing the online metadata of millions of internet users, disregarding of whether or not they are the persons of amour to the agency (The Guardians).Metadata is a cloud or envelope that includes the duration of a phone call, the identity of the caller and the receiver for an telecommunicate it could include the location information, the sender and the recipient, time, and sometimes its content, the web browsing regist er of an user and in some contingency account passwords. This envelope can be used to create a small picture of an case-by-cases life. From the disclosed classified documents of Edward Snowden, The Guardian reported on September 30, 2013 that NSA has developed a metadata repository, codenamed Marina. every computer metadata collected by NSA software package is say to the Marina database, Phone records are directed to a separate system. The agency is also gathering information from Facebook, twitter, Skype to build individual profile of every U.S. citizen (The New York Times). This typewrite of practice of NSA greatly hampers civilians right to waive speech. Extensive surveillance is harmful because it desponds the sour of civil liberties. Just consider the surveillance of mass people when they are reading, thinking, and communicating with each other in lay to make decisions about social and political issues. The only solution to protect our noetic privacy to think and deci de is we pack intellectual freedom from state interference.