A Discussion about the NSA is in order
Imagine you just sent someone you trust a very personal message that was intended for their eyes alone. Now imagine if a stranger were to look at your message, but they did not stop at just the one message, instead you find out they have been looking at every single message, picture, email you sent for the last decade.
On June 1 Congress will vote on the reauthorization of many controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, which includes Section 215, the "Lone Wolf" provision and the "roving wiretap" provision. After reading the previous sentence, you might be inclined to cease reading entirely, because I am convinced anytime the word "government" and "provision" are mentioned in the same sentence the subject matter instantly becomes uninteresting. I would further state that the writers of governmental provisions make college textbook authors look like Pulitzer Prize winners by comparison. But the fact remains that these provisions, along with subsequent litigation, have given the National Security Agency (NSA) extensive power to indiscriminately collect and sift through a massive amount of data (collected from phone conversations, emails and text messages) from the private conversations of American citizens.
Before I continue, it is important to note that the reason this information first became widely known to the public was through Edward Snowden, who released a massive amount of documents through news agencies in June 2013.
Before Snowden released the documents, which extensively showcased the NSA's reach, the Patriot Act, and all of its subsequent provisions, continued to be signed and renewed without much discussion from the public since its inception in 2001. It was only after Snowden released the documents in June of 2013, when mainstream American first became aware that the NSA has the capability to listen and collect private data from United States citizens.
Regardless whether you think Edward Snowden's actions were either just or traitorous, we now currently know the NSA is and has been conducting these types of operations on private citizens, and the truth is, we can no longer plead ignorance on the issue.
Of the aforementioned provisions, Section 215 has been cited as being the most controversial. The following members of government have stated that Section 215 should be reformed: President Barack Obama, Senator and 2016 Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and even the Republican Senator James Sensenbrenner, who was an "architect" of the Patriot Act. For the record, it is a rare event that both Cruz and Obama agree on the same issue and I assume they do so with a feeling of mutual disgust.
In a committee hearing, Senator Sensenbrenner, stated the following in regards to Section 215:
"I can say without qualification, Congress never intended to allow the bulk collections when it passed Section 215 and no fair reading of the text would allow for this program."
Now, as you have reached this point of this column, I entirely sympathize with the reader in the fact that most of this information may appear to be hard to digest or better put, boring. I understand entirely, but it is important to keep in mind that this information the NSA has collected could have very well been your own.
According to the americanbar.org, "Section 215 revises substantially the authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for seizure of business records, including third party records of individuals' transactions and activities."
Essentially, this section has been interpreted by the FISA court to allow for the bulk collections of data conducted by the NSA.
The FISA court is the main court that oversees the actions and requests from the NSA. In essence, if the NSA requests any action, especially in the case of collecting data from the citizens, the FISA court can either approve or deny their request as a measure of checks and balances. According to epic.org, from the years 1979-2013 the FISA court approved 35,434 requests from the NSA and only rejected 12.
The next item that can be called into question is the amount of terrorist actions diffused by the NSA from using these methods.
Since the NSA has been collecting data on American citizens it can only cite one case where they have diffused a terrorist act. It should be noted the act diffused by the NSA involved a San Diego cab driver who provided an al Qaeda affiliate organization with $8,500. For more information on this case check out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-cites-case-as-success-....
The main emphasis I would like to propose is that there should be a public discussion in regards to this matter.
In Alexis de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, Tocqueville states that in order for democracy to survive, the public must be informed and debate the issues facing the country. The problem occurs once people cease investigating the issues and stop debating, then our elected officials will have both no incentive and no point of reference to adhere to the public wishes.
The main issue behind Section 215 and the subsequent provisions is we as a nation cannot simultaneously have absolute privacy and absolute security. By allowing security, we have to in turn realize our privacy will be affected and vice versa. As for me, I believe that Section 215 and the other provisions have been proven to be ineffective, and it inherently infringes on the privacy of American citizens for very little gain.
When the Patriot Act was signed into law, as Americans, we were at a vulnerable point in our nation's history. 9-11 had just occurred and for the first time since the attack on Pearl Harbor, a foreign organization waged an attack on American soil. We were scared, and demanded to be protected from future attacks. The problem now is our privacy was given up for our protection. Privacy is a value we hold quintessential to the American experience.
The question I would like to pose: Is the benefit of indiscriminately collecting the phone calls, emails, and text messages of private citizens worth collecting when the result has been mostly ineffective, and is this measure essential for our national security?
As Americans, we owe it not only to ourselves but to the future of our nation to enter into a discussion about an issue which can have a massive effect for many years to come.
Grant is a staff writer for the Greene County Daily World. He can be reached by telephone at (812) 847-4487, ext. 19. He can also be reached via email at gkarazsia@gmail.com.
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