The power and influence of government agencies is truly astonishing. How is it that an entity within a nation’s government is able to get away with monitoring the private information of it’s citizens without probable cause? Is there any reason as to why the NSA needs so much information? Are there 120 million “suspected terrorists” in the world that could pose a threat? This kind of government influence within private citizen’s daily lives is truly becoming sickening.
The biggest problem, is that everybody is now a target. It doesn’t matter what someone does, they’re being watched. Companies such as Yahoo or Google are now trying to take extra measures to encrypt customer information, although time will tell if it will work. Organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are launching lawsuits in response to the NSA allegedly violating the privacy of innocent citizens. Even foreign governments such as Germany, France, Spain, and Italy are also being monitored by these intelligence agencies and they aren’t very pleased about it. Now people might think “Oh! I’ve done nothing wrong. Why should I care?” Think of this, if they have even one little bit of suspicion that you’ve done a crime, even if someone is completely innocent, they, the government, will use their database collected to prosecute them in a court of law. It’s highly doubted that anybody who pays taxes would be amused to know their money goes towards monitoring them for “suspicious activity”. As it seems everybody’s a target, and since everybody pays taxes, taxpayers are therefore targets.
Obviously the legitimacy of the NSA’s actions is something to be questioned. Isn’t there something called a constitution? Or a charter of rights? Something that protects a private citizen’s rights to privacy and freedom of speech? Well, it must be fictional as the government agencies don’t seem to know about it. Really though, monitoring millions of people’s information and now that people such as Edward Snowden found out and are telling the public, they’re trying to prosecute him and charge him with treason? That’s not treason, treason is whenever you betray your own country. The National Security Agency should be the ones charged with treason for violating the constitution of the United States. Spying on a nation’s citizens and then trying to silence whistleblowers, that’s a crime against the foundation of democracy and of their government. The NSA can’t even live up to their own self-inflicted restrictions, it’s truly unbelievable. What next? Monitoring foreign neutral countries in Latin America? Oh wait…Canada and the United States are already monitoring Brazil and Mexico. This is supposed to be illegal on a federal and international level but unless people start kicking up, nothing will happen.
Hopefully things will start changing for the better but it’s not looking good. Edward Snowden contributed such important documents to our new common knowledge of the NSA’s spying activities which will hopefully impact how the agency is operated. I am not against national security, but when national security starts to infringe on god-given rights, a line needs to be drawn. If nothing happens, then things can only get worse, developing into a form of tyranny.
Works Cited:
Roth, Kenneth. “The NSA’s Global Threat to Free Speech.” nybooks.com. The New York Review of Books, 18 November 2013. Web. 19 November 2013.
Gjelten, Tom. “Who Gets The Blame For NSA Spying? NSA Says Not Us.” npr.org. NPR, 13 November 2013. Web. 19 November 2013.
Techstring. “Yahoo to encrypt all products in light of NSA spying revelations.” techstring.wordpress.com. Tech String, 20 November 2013. Web. 20 November 2013.
Nicks, Denver. “Supreme Court Declines to Stop NSA Surveillance.” swampland.wordpress.com. TIME Swampland, 18 November 2013. Web. 20 November 2013.
Gastaldo, Evann. “NSA Copped to Breaking Spy Rules – Over and Over.” newser.com. Newser, 19 November 2013. Web. 20 November 2013.
Thomas Burleigh 