NSA Surveillance

RULES AND INFO: While I'm normally an avid LDer, occasionally I'll get interested in a PF topic, and this one is one of those topics. The topic is: The benefits of domestic surveillance by the NSA outweigh the harms. The rounds will be structured as follows: Round One: Cases (no rebuttals in round one please) Round Two: Rebuttals Round Three: Rebuttals Round Five: Final Focus BOP is shared. No plans, "kritiks," or solvency arguments. Everything else is fair game. Please format your initial case as a typical PF speech. I thank my opponent in advance for accepting and I anticipate a great debate! PRO's CASE Liberty and security go hand-in-hand; one cannot exist without the other. Domestic surveillance, while a behavior that ought to be closely monitored, is nevertheless vital to maintaining a secure domestic environment. Because of this, I steadfastly AFFIRM that the benefits of domestic surveillance by the NSA outweigh the harms. I will now briefly take time to define some key terms from the resolution in order to bring clarity to the round. All DEFINITIONS are from Merriam-Webster dictionary. "Domestic" means "of or relating to one's own country." "Surveillance" denotes "the act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime." Thus the resolution is not asking us to examine surveillance as a general activity or to explore the NSA's actions as a whole. Rather, the resolution requires us to focus on a very narrow aspect of what goes on at the NSA--domestic surveillance. "Outweigh" means "greater than in value or importance." Furthermore, "benefit" is a "good result," whereas a "harm" is "something that causes someone or something to be hurt, broken, made less valuable or successful." Because the resolution is asking us to directly compare benefits and harms, we should evaluate this topic from a cost-benefit perspective. Whichever path is most beneficial is the one we should prefer. Therefore, it is my THESIS that domestic surveillance has net benefit when compared to its potential harms. CONTENTION ONE: Surveillance is useful in combating domestic terror. Fernando Reinares, a Professor of Sociology and Politics, writes, "Given the clandestine and unpredictable nature of terrorism...resources may not be effective unless they are accompanied by mechanisms for detecting and preventing future threats. Reliable intelligence is an essential tool. Experience shows that, as long as the other components function as they should, success in the state's counter-terrorism campaign is directly proportional to the emphasis placed on the gathering and analyzing of reliable information...when intelligence is insufficient or inadequate, the terrorist group...will not hesitate to exploit this advantage by escalating its campaign of insurgent violence. In 1976...the Italian Government decided to dismantle the special anti-terrorist units it had created only a few years earlier...Terrorist attacks, which until then had been diminishing in frequency, immediately began to pick up and did not ease again until the early 1980s." John Carafano of the Heritage foundation adds, "At least 60 Islamist-inspired terrorist plots have been aimed at the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. The overwhelming majority have been thwarted thanks to timely, operational intelligence about the threats. Congress should not go back to a pre-9/11 set of rules just to appeal to populist sentiment. Congress and the White House have an obligation to protect our liberties and to safeguard our security--in equal measure." Domestic surveillance therefore has real impacts on preventing terrorist attacks within a nation like the U.S. CONTENTION TWO: The threat to privacy posed by domestic surveillance is incredibly small. The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports, "the Internet carries 1,826 Petabytes of information per day. In its foreign intelligence mission, NSA touches about 1.6% of that"However, of the 1.6% of the data, only 0.025% is actually selected for review. The net effect is that NSA analysts look at 0.00004% of the world's traffic in conducting their mission--that's less than one part in a million. Put another way, if a standard basketball court represented the global communications environment, NSA's total collection would be represented by an area smaller than a dime on that basketball court." As Security expert Sir David Osmund notes, what the U.S. and other states need "is the possibility of accessing the communications of the terrorists...But those communications are all mixed up with everyone else's communications...So you have to have a powerful capability to find the small amount that you are looking for. But it doesn't mean that the state is reading everyone's emails, nor would that conceivably be feasible." Furthermore, there is oversight of the NSA designed to prevent egregious oversteps of authority. The Las Vegas Sun newspaper states, the NSA "is subject to oversight by both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If the effort were being operated without due regard for privacy, the other branches of government could push back. For the most part, they apparently have approved of what's gone on." U.S. Deputy Attorney-General James Cole testified that domestic surveillance is not "a program that has been hidden away or off the books. In fact, all three branches of government play a significant role in the oversight...the judiciary, through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court plays a role...The executive branch conducts extensive internal reviews to ensure compliance. And Congress passes the laws, oversees our implementation of those laws, and determines whether or not the current laws should be reauthorized and in what form." Thus, because the benefits of the NSA's domestic surveillance outweigh the harms, I strongly affirm. SOURCES: 1. Carafano: http://www.heritage.org... (Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation think-tank) 2013. 2. Cole: https://www.hsdl.org...; (U.S. Deputy Attorney-General) 2013. 3. Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk... 2013. 4. Las Vegas Sun: http://www.lasvegassun.com... 2013. 5. Osmund: http://www.bbc.co.uk... (Former Head of GCHQ, Britain"s Equivalent of NSA.) 2013. 6. Reinares: http://www.ashgate.com... (Senior Analyst on International Terrorism, Elcano Royal Institute, and Professor of Political Science, King Juan Carlos University, Madrid) 2004.