NSA Surveillance

Many thanks to Danielle, again.To begin, I am going to clarify what the actual scope and nature of NSA surveillance is, and then I'll explain why -good or bad- it's necessary. As a disclaimer, I don't personally know quite where I stand on NSA surveillance. But for the purposes of this debate it is my responsibility to argue on the NSA's behalf -whether it should have the legal capacity to monitor data to the extent that it currently does. Because to determine whether the NSA should have the legal capacity to monitor data as it currently does, we must first know the scope of the NSA's reach, I'll begin there.The NSA and the Scope of its ReachThe National Security Agency is an agency within the US Department of Defense which collects and analyzes foreign communication and data transfers and protects and monitors the US Government's electronic infrastructure. (1) The NSA is legally limited to gathering only foreign communications and must avoid domestic surveillance where possible. Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who was employed as an NSA contractor, fled to Hong Kong after disclosing the details of NSA surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post.PRISM is alleged to enable the NSA to obtain "direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants," which enables data collection "directly from the servers of major US [internet] service providers" pursuant to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (2) However, the NSA is legally barred from "unilaterally obtaining information from the servers of [domestic] electronic communication service providers" or monitoring the substance of US citizens' communications without a warrant. (3,4) Moreover, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple have all released statements confirming that they only release user information pursuant to that required by law according to due process. (5) (6)James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, criticized reports in The Guardian and The Washington Post for their "numerous inaccuracies." Information collected by programs pursuant to FISA Sec. 702 are "designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States."(3) Moreover, NSA surveillance programs are the subject of extensive congressional and FISA court oversight, as Clapper confirmed (3). Extensive checks approved by FISA courts are in place "to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons." Clapper described the information collected under this program as "among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats." (3)So, despite the fears that Americans privacy is being surveyed, that liberty and due process are being sacrificed in the name of security and that American's protection from unlawful search and seizure is being ignored there is simply no verifiable evidence whatsoever to suggest that any of the above are the case. Perhaps in time future evidence may surface, but at present there is no reason to think that Americans' rights to privacy or protection from unreasonable search and seizure are being undermined by NSA surveillance programs. Why the NSA Should Have the Legal Capacity to Monitor Data as it Currently DoesAccording to NSA Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA surveillance efforts have "contributed to the 'understanding and, in many cases, disruptions' of 50 terrorist plots, obviously implying that the unauthorized disclosures will hinder the future understandings and disruptions." (6) While "there are reasons to be concerned about intelligence-agency overreach, excessive secrecy, and lack of transparency... there are also reasons to remain calm." (7)Hendrick Hertzberg argues: "The threat that [NSA surveillance measures] pose to civil liberties... is abstract, conjectural, unspecified. In the roughly seven years the programs have been in place in roughly their present form, no citizen’s freedom of speech, expression, or association has been abridged by them in any identifiable way... They have not put the lives of tens of millions of Americans under “surveillance” as that word is commonly understood." (7) While critics of the NSA and its activities have traded on American's fear of observation, they have consistently failed to demonstrate that any individual citizen has been harmed, their rights unconstitutionally violated or suffered as a result of NSA operations. (8) As such, while it is perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of any such program, "intelligence agencies are not designed to interact with the citizenry, nor do they have or want prosecutorial power" meaning that the NSA "would probably break down bureaucratically if it attempted to shift gears from foreign observation to domestic surveillance in any threatening way," because "snooping on Americans isn’t what the NSA has been built to do." (9) As Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former case officer in the CIA’s clandestine service contended "We may be on the cusp of a new wondrous counterterrorist tool; or we may be seeing American officials, once again, looking for a technical solution to a problem that actually requires intensive human labor, some of it morally challenging and bloody. Given the volatile state of Islamic militancy, the imminent nuclearization of the Islamic Republic, whose ruling elite has terrorism in its DNA, and the likely coming defeat of the United States in Afghanistan, which will probably supercharge jihadism, a big attack inside the United States in the coming years wouldn’t be surprising. We should want to assess PRISM’s capacities thoroughly and critically. It may be a great technology—or it may be an overpriced dream whose promise was just too appealing. What we shouldn’t do is throw it away over unwarranted fears of snooping." (9)In consequence, Americans expectation of privacy cannot (at least yet) be described as the opportunity cost of NSA efforts to protect US national security. There is no excessive overreach as those who trade on fear of the unknown would lead you to believe, and there are very good reasons to maintain NSA infrastructure as it exists now. Perhaps greater oversight is indeed something worth taking into consideration, but that is a separate issue because as it stands, no American citizen within US borders can be monitored by the NSA (or any other government agency) without that agency first obtaining a warrant to do so and respecting that individual's due process rights. (1) http://www.washingtonpost.com...(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk...(3) http://www.dni.gov...(4)http://www.dni.gov...(5) http://techcrunch.com...(6) http://blogs.reuters.com...(7) http://www.newyorker.com...(8) http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov...(9) http://www.weeklystandard.com...