USA Patriot Act

With the rise of the digital age, people all over the world are able to use electric devices in their everyday lives. Whether it is calling, texting, emailing, or using social media, most people cannot live without their electronic devices and connection to the internet. As a result of all of this traffic, massive amounts of data is passed through the internet. One’s internet activity can tell a lot about who they are. Someone’s personality, likes, dislikes, character, and behavior can be monitored by their search history and online activity.

However, many Americans as well as people around the world have grown suspicious of governmental surveillance of electronic devices in the name of security. Many feel uncomfortable about this type of surveillance as they believe that it violates their Fourth Amendment right to privacy against unreasonable search and seizure. On the other hand, the supporters of surveillance argue that it is for the security of the nation and can stop terrorist threats.

The attacks on 9/11 fueled the need for American security agains foreign and domestic terrorist threats. Just six weeks after the attacks, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT ACT without much opposition. The FBI, NSA. And other security agencies were able to get personal information from individuals without a warrant and without asking them. The Protect America Act in 2007 allowed the government to wiretap foreign communications; now the government could legally listen to court orders without any permission. However, these acts did not initially bother Americans as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 brought up many feelings of insecurity; the horrors of these events caused mass paranoia and therefore demands for more security.

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These sentiments changed when an IT contractor of the NSA, Edward Snowden, revealed that the NSA was mass monitoring American citizens by searching through emails, phone calls, and other uses if internet data.

Many Americans were angered about this information as it was a clear invasion of their privacy on a massive scale and public outcry against the Patriot Act grew. As a response to Edward Snowden’s information leak and the need to renew the the PATRIOT Act, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048). This Act extended some aspects of the PATRIOT ACT but also limited some aspects of NSA surveillance such as storing permanent phone data. There is an abundance of evidence which proves that the government was conducting surveillance on ordinary citizens; much of this evidence comes from whistleblowers, or people who work for a groups who intentionally leak classified information to the public. Edward Snowden was possibly the most popular government whistleblower as NSA Director General Keith Alexander stated that “Snowden has shared somewhere between 50(thousand) and 200,000 documents with reporters”.(1)

Edward Snowden first leaked the classified information to The Guardian Newspaper on June 5, 2013. The Washington Post, one of the other news outlets which Edward Snowden reported to, found that “Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high promotion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S citizens or residents” (2). According to the Washington Post, much of the evidence which the NSA stored was not related or relevant to stopping terrorist threats. Edward Snowden, in an interview with The Guardian, states that “you simply have to fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they(NSA) can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with and attack you on that basis”(3)