I wrote this essay in eighth grade, so the quality may be subpar.
In an age where digital technology permeates every facet of modern life, the issue of government surveillance has emerged as a contentious battleground between national security imperatives and individual, and constitutional, privacy rights. At the forefront of this debate stands the National Security Agency, NSA, a governmental body entrusted with the formidable task of safeguarding the nation against foreign and domestic threats. It is a good bet these days that almost anyone has some internet-enabled, message-capable device on them at all times. When messages are sent through these devices, people expect them to be secure, and, for all intents and purposes, they are. Although secure, in recent times, operations run by the NSA, respectively PRISM, XKeyscore, and Upstream have been intercepting vast quantities of communications metadata from US citizens. However, there is a strong possibility that the NSA has picked up text messages or calls from most US citizens through FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or an NSL, National Security Letter. Even while enticing for national security, the intentional censorship and oversight of personal and private-enterprise communications without an official warrant is not only immoral but outright unconstitutional. The staggering amount of precedent and stare decisis demonstrates the necessity of private communications in personal and enterprise environments.
Even though debate and argument can be helpful and get discourse far, legal precedence is indubitably the most powerful and compelling to initiate change. Since our nation's inception, privacy has been a central credo of our laws and doctrine. The quantity of doctrine of judicial precedent is unrivalled in almost any other constitutional law debate. EO, Executive Order, 12333 proclaims that intel agencies are "restricted in collecting intelligence information against US citizens" and require warrants to tap or collect data. Sadly, after the "Patriot Act" was put in place, many of these liberties started to crumble. NSLs, National Security Letters, can let FBI agents obtain personal and private-enterprise information without a warrant from a judge. These actions were unequivocally and unmistakably unconstitutional. These measures spurred some insiders to release a plethora of damning documents to the public, which included the specifications of the surveillance effort in the public realm. Some subsections of the Patriot Act were repealed and declared unconstitutional because "the FBI had no probable cause to issue NSLs." In the end, these so-called NSLs captured only one suspected terrorist. Additionally, the NSL was only used to corroborate evidence, not to catch the aforementioned terrorist actively. As illustrated in this paragraph, this surveillance is not only illegal but useless, with worse-than-dismal results.
The second tenet on which this argument is based is regarding public interest. As we live in a democracy, the state has the obligation to act in the people's best interests. According to a recent AP poll, only 28% of people support the interception of foreign communications. This poll paints a glaring picture that the national appetite to cease government surveillance is growing exponentially compared to after 9/11. The citizens ought to reflect on how Orwellian this society is to be before it takes that form permanently. Even while shielded from public oversight, both the President and inspector general oversee the capacity of the agencies responsible for digital communications metadata. The President appoints a National Security Advisor who advises the President and the Joint Chiefs on the actions of intelligence agencies, domestic, US Department of Homeland Security, and FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or foreign, DIA, Defence Intelligence Agency, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, and NSA, National Security Agency. The Inspector General can also oversee budgets, among other intelligence duties. Sadly, the reason Americans could not respond to this Orwellian threat was because, well, it was classified. The documents were classified so highly that most people working on active clandestine surveillance did not even know what data they were collecting. The only reason that Edward Snowden could acquire and disseminate the documents was because he was a systems engineer for a CIA contractor. He had tremendous and relatively unprecedented oversight over many files that he and only a few others had ever seen. He had seen so much over his tenure that in his book, he remarks about how once the FBI realized it was him and searched his house, they were going to be scared, not because they knew what Snowden was going to distribute but because he could disseminate every damaging national security document authored in the past ten years. It should not take a person who has to flee to Russia to inform citizens of what is happening to them; it should be a relatively public policy decision not of the state but of the citizens.
While the Patriot Act did have good intentions, it was overzealous and thought up by people who were non-compos mentis. The whole country was outraged, and at the time, the act was warranted, temporarily. However, the encroachment of rights was unmistakable and tarnished our history as a country and a democracy. That brings the argument to its third tenet: the omnipotent rights granted to the government in the Patriot Act never should have been implemented for so long. The systemic and systematic surveillance of US citizens happened for almost a decade. We can also reflect on past oversight failures. Regarding these relatively unprecedented activities, HUAC, House Un-American Activities Committee, was one of the most comparable state-sanctioned actions. Not all, but certainly most Americans look at HUAC with disdain and contempt. Within our domestic schools, it is taught as a black mark on our nation's history. Even if used in moderation, NSLs and censorship can slowly corrupt the morals and ideals of a country, just as excessive surveillance did during the Red Scare.
The core question of this whole debate entails whether a federal employee serving in the citizens' best interests should need an official judge-ordered precept for surveillance. What about if it is for national security grounds? Or an impending terrorist threat? These are questions with imperceptible answers that require careful examination and context. Even though these are nuanced matters, nobody who is a citizen of the state deserves to be spied on without an official warrant from a judge. Even when most citizens agree that surveillance is not in their personal or business interests they are helpless to the whims of the "black ops" and highly kept secrets of these shady highly-funded government agencies. Almost all damning documents are protected from FOIA with immense classification measures along with the agents not being permitted to speak on the topic in a deposition or affidavit. All that prevents legal and PR repercussions. In full summary, US citizens should unequivocally not be surveilled by the people who have put their hands on a Bible to protect them, their interests domestically, and their security. Censorship is a slippery slope, and we are slowly, and accelerating, into a much more surveillance state of society.
Works Cited
- American Civil Liberties Union. "NSA Surveillance." American Civil Liberties Union, 2013, www.aclu.org.
- Bureau of Justice Assistance. "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA)." Bureau of Justice Assistance, bja.ojp.gov.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation. "NSA Spying." Electronic Frontier Foundation, www.eff.org.
- "Intelligence Surveillance." EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center, epic.org.
- Nakashima, Ellen. "NSA Surveillance Program Still Raises Privacy Concerns Years after Exposure, Member of Privacy Watchdog Says." Washington Post, 29 June 2021, www.washingtonpost.com.
- Taitz, Sarah. "Five Things to Know about NSA Mass Surveillance and the Coming Fight in Congress." American Civil Liberties Union, 11 Apr. 2023, www.aclu.org.
More from Ryan McComb
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