Government Surveillance is an Issue of Privacy
As of October 2014, 64 percent of American citizens used a smartphone (Pew). The possibilities for communication that are created with smartphones is mind blowing. Through social media applications and nearly constant access to the Internet, we as consumers have the ability to communicate with people from allover the world.
There is a secret to our communicative abilities, though. While we, average American citizens have a nearly unlimited access to other human beings through different communicative devices, the government simultaneously has nearly unlimited access to our believed private lives as well. In a society that has so intricately integrated smartphones, tablets, and other communicate devices into our everyday lives, it can be a painful realization to learn that the government could possibly be using our own devices against us.
What is the NSA and what is its purpose?
The NSA is an intelligence gathering organization specializing in the collection and monitoring of information for foreign and counterintelligence purposes. The NSA’s primary jurisdiction falls under the collection of SIGINT or signals intelligence. The NSA’s responsibilities involve the protection of the US government networks and information systems from intruders and various forms of cyber warfare. While much of the NSA’s work is passive data collection, the organization is also permitted to conduct its missions through the use of clandestine operations such as the physical bugging of information systems and the sabotaging of these systems through the use of malicious software programs. Officially established in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman, the NSA was originally a unit created to decipher codes during World War II. Over the years its size and influence has grown to now become one of the largest intelligence organizations operating within the United States in terms of budget and employees.
Domestic NSA Surveillance
The NSA has had an extensive history of domestic surveillance, most notably following the events of September 11, 2001. Prior to this however, the NSA’s mission was laid out under Executive Order 12333 in 1981. Under the order instituted by President Ronald Reagan, the NSA was assigned to collect information considered to be “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence” while at the same time avoiding the acquisition of information concerning the “domestic activities of United States persons”. For this reason, the NSA mostly relies on the assistance of domestic oriented agencies such as the FBI to collect information on foreign intelligence activities within the United States.
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Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush took initiative to broaden the security measures taken by the NSA and other intelligence agencies in the United States. These measures amounted to a collection of secret intelligence activities known as the President’s Surveillance Program. The Patriot Act was perhaps the most notable of these and authorized the NSA to expand its methods and security measures against terrorism, such as roving wiretaps, business record searches, and the surveillance of terror related activities outside of known terrorist groups. Expansions continued in 2004 with the introduction of a new authorization for the mass surveillance of Internet and phone records. This would override the protection of citizens from mass surveillance laid out under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Following reports from the New York Times over the details of President Bush’s President’s Surveillance Program, attention began to be drawn towards the domestic surveillance activities of the NSA. Media attention would also be drawn to the NSA in 2006, when a database of American’s phone calls were made public by a USA Today article. These programs operated with the assistance of telecommunications companies to produce records of citizens calls made all across the country regardless of evidence relating to their involvement in terrorism.
However it was not until 2013 under the Obama administration that the NSA’s surveillance programs began to come under the significant attention by the media. In June of 2013, Edward Snowden, a former CIA and NSA systems analyst released a cache of nearly 20,000 documents regarding the intelligence gathering activities of the NSA. From these documents it was discovered that the NSA had accrued a large network of intelligence programs designed to collect telephone and internet conversations from over a billion people worldwide. These revelations would mark a turning point in the intelligence gathering community and change the way Americans look at privacy forever.