NSA Surveillance

Thanks, Pro. I'll get right to it... Our nation was founded upon the principle that people are most free if they concede only minimal of their natural rights to government. As such, the Constitution provided a clause in the 4th Amendment which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause before a search is conducted. This allows the people of the United States to carry on their daily lives without fear of the government interfering or spying on them unnecessarily and unjustly. The Supreme Court acknowledges that collecting and storing data on individuals qualifies as a "search," considering information is being retrieved from the digital space that may potentially be used against them. Americans should not have to forego this protection or the reasonable expectation of privacy under the guise of it being for our "safety." By using the excuse that the potential for harm is a reason to expand the Big Brother Police / Surveillance State, we have essentially neutered the 4th Amendment; it no longer carries any real significance. The potential for harm is not a legitimate reason to override the rights of individuals. For instance, I MIGHT light my neighbor's house on fire, but that is not a legitimate reason for the government to prohibit me from buying matches or from spying on me incessantly to ensure that I don't. The president and his administration now have total power that supersedes all other authority "to secretly gather, store, and analyze an infinite amount of information gathered from the private communications of millions of law-abiding citizens." The fact that we have perhaps unintentionally granted the government this authority indicates one of the many dangers of the so-called Intelligence Industrial Complex: that the public and even our elected officials have been kept largely in the dark about the extent and scope government spying programs, thus inhibiting almost all aspects of their accountability. "A court ruling in 2011 determined that the U.S. government had engaged in unconstitutional behavior in its surveillance program, but the Department of Justice is trying to block Americans from seeing this court ruling and understanding what happened. We"re supposed to trust this oversight. We know they"ve broken the law once, but we don"t know what they did, what's stopping it from happening again, what harm was caused, and whether there was any sort of punishment or discipline" [C]. In addition to that incredibly alarming lack of accountability to the public, let's not forget that the people largely in control of our information as well as the process of looking at/ utilizing it are in fact those in organizations like the CIA, Federal Reserve, Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and of course the NSA, etc. - none of whom are elected officials. They are appointed or hired as private contractors, further inhibiting accountability to the public. They know everything about us, but we know little to nothing about them. "In practice, much of the decision-making appears to lie with NSA analysts, rather than the Fisa court or senior officials... Once armed with these general orders, the NSA is empowered to compel telephone and internet companies to turn over to it the communications of any individual identified by the NSA. The Fisa court plays no role in the selection of those individuals, nor does it monitor who is selected by the NSA" [A]. In other words, a lot of the surveillance that is going on happens behind closed doors by people who could easily misuse or abuse their alleged and at times self-appointed authority. Make no mistake about it: there are incentives for people and the government to exploit their power. In terms of the government, consider the fact that just about every American is probably a criminal. If you have broken the speed limit, pirated a song, smoked a joint, or even jay walked then you have broken the law. The Prison Industrial Complex - a term used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies, and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies - is just one example of how the government and those in the business of expanding the Police State profit from incarcerating or otherwise monetarily penalizing people for minor crimes. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, "Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich."There are other reasons and incentives for people to abuse this system. Consider how Richard Nixon was impeached for spying on his political opponents via Watergate. Now the government (politicians) can legally spy on their political opponents in every possible way. Furthermore, the spying program can be a way to specifically target political activists or opponents of the current administration. It is not unlikely that said people will be unfairly targeted or discriminated against; proof is in the recent IRS scandal where certain activist groups were targeted because of their political affiliation. This is hardly different from racial profiling which is illegal and problematic to civil rights.The so-called War on Terror that is used to justify excessive state surveillance is little more than propaganda based on blatant fear mongering. A war on "terror" is a war that can never be won; it is a war without a clear enemy and one that will be perpetual so long as there is the potential for human conflict to occur. In other words... for as long as there are humans. Scaring people into thinking that they need the government to spy on every aspect of their human interaction in order to protect themselves is psychologically abusive. Consider the fact that you are 8x more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist [D]. Studies in neuroscience confirm that people can be manipulated to exaggerate irrational (statistically speaking) fears [E]. By convincing people that they ought to be afraid, it makes it easier for them to voluntarily concede some of their liberties. The expectation of privacy for American citizens is reasonable. Most of us utilize curtains, do not share our bank statements with strangers, and do not readily divulge our personal information to others without a legitimate reason. A lack of privacy can lead to social control. The "I-have-nothing-to-hide argument myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy, rather than conceding the implications of data mining. When you have a group of people - especially people who are not easy to hold accountable - monitoring every call, watching and retaining every e-mail, and spying on every human interaction, it means the already problematic and frequently abusive government is completely compromised. It means legal and/or easier insider trading which is detrimental to the economy and exploits the average consumer/ investor [B]. It means total manipulation of the markets, of the Congress and of the courts. It means being able to predict human behavior and use real time techniques to manipulate that behavior. This is all excessive amounts of power in the hands of a few in authority and it's happening. It should not, and we should not have to rely on whistle blowers to protect us - especially given the anti-whistle blower climate. Back to Pro. [A] http://www.rawstory.com...[B] http://www.businessinsider.com...[C] http://reason.com...[D] http://www.cato.org...[E] http://scienceblogs.com...