Back in June, The Guardian revealed a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over phone records. As time went on, whistleblower Edward Snowden proceeded to give various news agencies classified documents to publish, including the Guardian, among others. Later, this was extended to government collection of personal emails, and spying on American allies. See the EFF for more information. Several organizations have now stepped out, including the ACLU and EFF, to challenge the constitutionality of the broad search powers granted to the NSA.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of these revelations is the idea that even the majority of congressmen did not know about these programs - had they known about these, an argument could be made that at least our representatives knew the extent of the surveillance. However, these programs were wholly unknown to the majority of our representatives; only three congresspeople in California were privy to this knowledge - Diane Feinstein, Rep. Devin Nunes (22nd), and Rep. Adam Schiff (29th). The fact that out of the 55 congresspeople in California, only 3 of them knew of this program raises the inevitable question - is secrecy, especially on this scale, fundamentally abhorrent to the concept of democracy?
In light of these revelations, the Obama administration has beaten a retreat from the denial to an attitude of compromise. However, this really begs the question - should the government be engaging such broad and sweeping surveillance at all?
Proponents of the surveillance point to the over 50 terrorist attacks thwarted by this program, but any trace of these terrorist attacks are not yet available to the public.
Opponents say that the surveillance violates the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizure and the First Amendment's freedom of speech protection (via the Iorfida v. MacIntyre defense against governmental restrictions of the 1st, referred to as "chilling effects").
Three things to take into consideration:
- The FBI's usage of entrapment was brought up on 2012, concerning FBI agents' incitement of people to domestic terrorism
- Clapper's denial of the programs
- According to The U.S. Government, a total of 12,533 people were killed and 25,903 were wounded worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011, in comparison to the 1.3 million deaths by road injury. (terrorism kills less than 1% of the people car accidents do).
4 comments:
This certainly is an extremely important and complex issue that I believe will continue to divide Americans for many more years. Whenever the subject of NSA surveillance comes up my initial thought is usually "who cares?" If you aren't doing anything wrong, why should you care if the NSA looks at who you are calling, or emailing, or what you're searching on the Internet?
In most cases, I am willing to forfeit the privilege of privacy if it means better ensuring my safety and the safety of others. In addition, I think the notion that if we allow such obstructions to our privacy will only lead to greater violations of our privacy is a slippery slope fallacy. As Nathan posted, the NSA surveillance techniques have thwarted 50 terrorist attacks. While these attacks may have been amplified by the very actions of the NSA, if the NSA and the Executive are seeing positive results, there is no need to expand their practices.
Lastly, I think it is important that we remain focused on what we know for certain. There is no reason we have to believe that the president is reading our bank statements or our text messages, as some politicians like to insinuate. We should look at this issue in the scope of being an issue of the entire Executive branch.
I can definitely see how people can be ticked off by government surveillance. But here’s an interesting blog post by Kevin Drum of motherjones.com: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/new-poll-says-american-public-fine-nsa-surveillance. The new poll shows that republicans and democrats have significantly changed their views on NSA surveillance since 2006. Drum points out that “[b]asically, when Bush was president, Republicans thought that monitoring telephone traffic was a great idea. Now, when Obama is president, they're not so sure—but Democrats think it's fine and dandy.” But he also admits that back then, they might’ve not been as clear on what government surveillance really consisted of as people today are.
Safety always comes with a price. If checking our phone records and emails brings us just a little closer to keeping my family and thousands of other families safe, as unwilling as I may be to sacrifice my own personal privacy, I would tolerate it. But it’s still unclear whether or not conventional police/law enforcement methods are sufficient enough to block terrorist attacks, and if these programs really make a difference, as questioned in this article by the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/12/nsa-surveillance-data-terror-attack.
I agree with Joey: if the NSA wants to know who I'm communicating with for my safety, etc, I can forgive that. But what do I need to safe from? Terrorist attacks? Before I jump to any conclusions about the greatness about the NSA, I want to know /what/ I'm being protected from, and how the NSA taps benefit. I want proof of a threat before I get paranoid.
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