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Christopher Doan

L. Jacoby

English 101-07

16 September 2017

Big Brother and the Evil Eye of the NSA

The state of surveillance has massively changed in the past 15 years. People are now spied

on by the National Security Agency at alarming levels. Everything that modern society does with

current technology is collected, analyzed, and stored by our government in an attempt to use this

data to keep us safe from the threat of terrorism. This is a complete invasion of privacy.

Citizens should be able to go online or talk on their phones without fear of the all-seeing eye of

Uncle Sam peering over their shoulders.

In a TED talk, Mikko Hypponen (a professional hacker and activist for citizens privacy

rights) spoke about many of the issues society now faces as a result of the NSA. The surveillance

the agency uses watches every search and email sent through servers based in the United States.

Even foreign citizens have to be afraid of their data being collected because almost all internet

traffic in some way or another passes through the U.S (Hypponen).

Hypponen described the new data collection center in Utah that is used to collect this data.

Imagine everything anyone has ever done on the internet being stored on servers in one giant

building. He stated, We estimate that just the electricity bill for running this data center is going to

be in the tens of millions of dollars a year. And this kind of wholesale surveillance means that they

can collect our data and keep it basically forever.

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Forever? Thats a big pill to swallow. That means any search on Google, any YouTube

video shared on Facebook, or even some random blurt on Twitter can be pulled up 20 years from

now. There is also an astonishing amount of risk in this technology. Bad guy hackers would be

able to find a way into this data and be able to use it to their advantage as well. Societys collective

personal information is now at risk of being pirated and used for whatever purpose any hacker with

a little know-how of breaking into encrypted servers would desire. The latest breach into Equifax

is proof that this kind of information is available with the right tools.

The ACLU websites article on NSA surveillance describes the leaps and bounds the

agency has made since September 11, 2001. The governments surveillance programs have

infiltrated most of the communications technologies we have come to rely on. The article also

states, They are largely enabled by a problematic law passed by Congress- the FISA

Amendments Act (FAA), which is set to expire this year- along with Executive Order 12,333, the

primary authority invoked by the NSA to conduct surveillance outside the United States (NSA

Surveillance).

Another huge tool of government that enables them to spy on us, with the fear of terrorist

threats as its foothold is the Patriot Act. The full title of the Patriot Act is The Uniting and

Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct

Terrorism Act of 2001. It was approved less than 45 days after the September 11th attacks on the

World Trade Center towers, and since then has shown no signs of slowing down its presence. As

well as increased surveillance on foreign and domestic citizens, it also has made security at

international borders and airports almost seem like military checkpoints from the Nazi Germany

era. As stated in a How Stuff Works article, The goals of the Patriot Act are to strengthen
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domestic security and broaden powers of law enforcement agencies with regards to identifying and

stopping terrorists (Grabianowski).

Until recently, the average American citizen assumed that the U.S. governments job was to

provide safety from terrorism, but they discovered that the government was also spying on them

when a man named Edward Snowden decided to risk his liberty. He released information that the

NSA was spying on every citizen using a vast array of technologies not known to the public.

Some view this act as treason, while others hail him as a hero. What he did do was blow the lid off

of NSA surveillance, and how the public viewed the government they once thought was only

trying to protect them.

Snowden worked as a contractor at Booz Allen in Hawaii for the NSA. In 2013 he

released hundreds of files he collected on NSA surveillance to the news outlet The Guardian,

which then released the leaks to the public. The United States immediately tried to capture him to

arrest him for espionage and treason. By then, he had already flown to Hong Kong for asylum.

After staying in China for a period of time, Russia allowed him asylum where he now

(supposedly) resides (Gurnow 210).

American society will never be the same after September 11, 2001. Although the

government uses various tools to spy on everyday citizens, there is really nothing to fear (at least

yet). Sure, its wrong that the United States spies on everyone. Without that spying though,

citizens would be at an even more risk of being attacked by some zealot with a bomb strapped to

their chest.

If society wants to move forward, it needs to find a solution to terrorism. It needs to be able

to find peace between religions, cultures, and other reasons that cause conflict. Spying on the
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people that make up the country that is supposed to be the greatest nation in the world is not that

solution.
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Works Cited

Grabianowski, Ed. How the Patriot Act Works. How Stuff Works, 6 Jul. 2007,

people.howstuffworks.com/patriot-act.htm.

Gurnow, Michael. The Edward Snowden Affair - Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the

NSA Scandal. Blue River Press, 2014.

Hypponen, Mikko. How the NSA betrayed the worlds trust -- time to act. YouTube. 7

Nov. 2013, TedTalk.

NSA Surveillance. ACLU, 2017,

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/nsa-surveillance.