Recently here in the United States and around the world people have learned the news regarding the NSA’s recent leaks about its domestic surveillance programs. People have come to see many opinions formed from different kinds of social media around the world. Finding out the facts regarding Edward Snowden's leak of classified NSA files to the public is challenging because there may be different aspects to the situation like the credibility of the leaks, the many interpretations of the leaks by the news and other people, and the many secrets the NSA holds regarding invasion of privacy. One of the concerns revolving around this issue is the NSA’s incorporation of their PRISM surveillance program in the American people’s lives. I believe that the American people should be more informed about the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs because it would enable legislators and the public to see flaws that already exist in the NSA. The disclosure of the invasion of privacy related personal information used by the NSA, would lead the government to limit the NSA’s power to invade the privacy of the American people. And lastly the disclosed information to the public would lead the NSA itself to be more cautious in conducting what seems to be illegitimate domestic surveillance in order to maintain a respectable relationship and reputation with the government and the American people.

 

              The NSA’s domestic surveillance program can be traced back to the year 2001, where the September 11 attacks occurred when former President George W. Bush was in office. It was first developed with the initial goal of retrieving vital information on terrorists or suspected terrorists, both abroad and domestic. Back then throughout many governmental documents, it was officially known as the “President’s Surveillance Program.” There has been always a sense of secrecy and mystery behind the domestic surveillance aspect of this program that was conducted by the NSA. Since 2001 the program has evolved in many ways like the transition away from telecommunication, such as phone calling, and now is more geared towards using social media as a platform for collecting data. Also these programs run more extensively throughout the country than it did in 2001. The programs where able to evolve as technological advancements have made such achievements possible.

      

          There are some aspects however that remained constant and that has allowed the NSA to conduct their domestic surveillances, even to this day. For example when the program first started out, the government used telecommunication companies’ data and metadata to retrieve call-detail records of their customers. According to Surveillance Techniques: How Your Data Becomes Our Data, fundamental aspects that started from the beginning of the program combined with advancements in technology and techniques, work hand in hand together to have evolved the program at a level to where the, “NSA technicians have installed intercept stations at key junction points, or switches, throughout the country. These switches are located in large windowless buildings owned by the major telecommunication companies and control the domestic internet traffic flow across the nation. A fiber optic splitter is placed on the incoming communication lines and routes the traffic to an NSA intercept station for processing” (Domestic Surveillance Directorate). This illustrates the information gathering process that the people are looking into, regarding the invasion of privacy. Understanding this process will help further our knowledge on how our privacy is dealt with by the NSA, which will ultimately help us understand the basic routine operations that the NSA conducts in order to receive the large majority of their information on data and metadata.

 

 

           The domestic surveillance program now extends not only to telecommunication related surveillances, but also to other forms of technology like social media. This furthers the expansion of the program and merits that the NSA uses the help of other governmental agencies as well. This can be seen here by the domestic surveillance directorate’s illustration, “Our partners at the FBI DITU (Data Intercept Technology Unit) extract information from the servers of nine major American internet companies: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. This important partnership gives us direct access to audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs for each of these systems. Established in 2007, the Top Secret Prism program has allowed us to closely track targeted individuals over time. Our ability to conduct live surveillance of search terms has given us important insights into their thoughts and intentions” (Domestic Surveillance Directorate).

 

             In addition to utilizations of other governmental agencies and major companies throughout the American market place, the NSA also utilizes vital research in order to strengthen its power in domestic surveillance. Having an MA from John Hopkins University the highly skilled journalist and writer Ann Finkbeiner writes about how much researchers and the NSA are intertwined with one another, more often than most of us think so. According to her article “Researchers Split Over NSA Hacking”, “Mathematicians and the NSA are certainly interdependent. The agency declares that it is the United States’ largest math employer, and Samuel Rankin, director of the Washington DC office of the American Mathematical Society, estimates that the agency hires 30–40 mathematicians every year. The NSA routinely holds job fairs on university campuses, and academic researchers can work at the agency on sabbaticals. In 2013, the agency’s mathematical sciences program offered more than US$3.3 million in research grants. Furthermore, the NSA has designated more than 150 colleges and universities as centers of excellence, which qualifies students and faculty members for extra support. It can also fund research indirectly through other agencies, and so the total amount of support may be much higher. A leaked budget document says that the NSA spends more than $400 million a year on research and technology — although only a fraction of this money might go to research outside the agency itself” (Finkbeiner, A.).

 

 

            The NSA expanding their domestic surveillance program(s), partnering with other governmental agencies, and conducting a strong nation-wide research effort, helps illustrate the kind of things the NSA are willing to do in order to obtain the American peoples’ invasion of privacy related data. Now that we have an idea of the sort of power and influence that the NSA truly possesses. We’re ready to see the magnitude of why the reasons stated above, merit the disclosure of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program to the American people.

 

           Many people and legislators that have recently learned about the NSA’s leaks had troubling thoughts about the programs the agency employs, and thus have resulted in observing the flaws that already exists in the NSA, particularly flaws that pertain to the American citizens’ agenda. Finkbeiner portrays that not only the public notices the flaws that the NSA has acquired, but also employees and close associates of the NSA itself. In her article she cites Edward Felten who studies computer security at Princeton University in New Jersey. Felten claims that when researchers and the NSA work together, “there was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross, and now we’re not so sure about that” (Finkbeiner A.).

   

        Robert McKim CEO for M/S Database Marketing portrays that legislators too, not just the American people, can even see the flaws that are occurring in our nation regarding already occurring privacy and security policy. McKim illustrates one of the many ways congress is reacting to the perceived flaws in the NSA: “Congress is also considering giving companies an incentive to improve security protection by making it easier for consumers to sue companies and the directors of companies that violate their privacy”. This proposed solution not only helps to solve privacy but also security issues pertaining to private information, thus it would be appropriate to conclude that this policy being enacted hits “two birds with one stone”. Congress has seen many forms of privacy related problems that encouraged them to see flaws in the NSA and many other organizations, like when McKim exposed data collected from a reputable source at the American Bank Association which concluded that people, “are easy prey for hackers. A privacy consultant hired by the American Bankers Association estimates that more than 50% of the financial institutions take inadequate steps to prevent fraud”. This and many other cases pushed congress and the American people to act.

    

         Perhaps the most revolutionary person to see the flaws pertaining to invasion of privacy took action in order to protect the rights of the American people and try to fix the already seen flaws in the established system of privacy regulations that the NSA has conducted, was Edward Snowden. Susan Landau is a faculty member in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Department of Social Science and Policy Studies, where she works on cybersecurity, privacy, and public policy. She explains in her article Making Sense from Snowden: What’s Significant in the NSA Surveillance Revelations, illustrates the true intentions that Snowden had when he leaked the NSA files. Edward Snowden was a former NSA contractor and official leaker of many NSA classified files has expressed his beliefs by stating that the, “NSA and intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible. It believes, on the grounds of sort of a self-certification, that they serve the national interest” (Landau, S.). This shouldn’t be the case because no organization is above the law.

    

        Signs of the events and issues that would revolve around the NSA today can be seen and traced back years from now, when this issue wasn’t a major topic yet on people’s minds, as portrayed in Wayne Madsen’s article National Security Agency cited for security problems. Wayne Madsen is an American investigative journalist, author and columnist specializing in intelligence and international affairs. In his article he mentions that the NSA Director in 1997 General William Odom, was questioned on NSA lobbying and asserted that, “It’s a sense of talking to Members of Congress as we do on all sorts of legislation”… Odom never described what other legislation NSA actually ‘lobbied’ for or against” (Madsen, W.). This shows that the NSA shouldn’t have that much power in directing Congress to conduct certain policies in their favor. The Judicial Branch oversees court cases throughout the United States, and may be cited for the unchanging flaws that have been seen in the NSA and other organizations too, because of their own interpretation of court cases pertaining to invasion of privacy. Professor Andrew E. Taslitz at Duke University School of Law illustrates this point perfectly in his article when he claims that, “Indeed, to read most United States Supreme Court case law under the Fourth Amendment, one would be hard-pressed to see any mention or other indication of understanding of the indignation felt by people like the protesting Ybor City residents or Judge Kozinski. The Court generally, though not always, conceives of privacy as a cognitively driven issue, divorced from human emotion” (Taslitz, A.). This is clear evidence in why reform regarding privacy issues pertaining to the Fourth Amendment takes a slow process to fully form and actually effect current policy.

 

         Hamid R. Jamali is part of the Information Science program at Kharazmi University and Saeid Asadi is an Assistant Professor at Shahed University specializing in Information technology, both of which illustrated through collecting data and research that, “Among the major search companies, Google has gained a reputation as one of the leading and most popular search engines. In 2006 in the USA there were 91 million queries searched daily on Google alone. The total number of queries searched daily on all search engines was 200 million ([30] Sullivan, 2006).” (Jamali, H. and Asadi, S.). This illustrates that the NSA is basing citizens off their Google searches which may not be the most valid way of conducting surveillance because Google searching is such a common and trivial activity that is done by so many Americans every day that actual surveillance information would render it useless in helping the agency at all. Also the NSA may be endangering itself of creating a false positive all together.

 

       Finally the last concern that the people and legislators need to know in order to see the flaws that are already established in the NSA regarding privacy issues is addressed by Steve Mansfield Devine. Devine is a professional journalist and in his article Monitoring communications: the false positive problem, he elaborates on how the surveillance programs in America are quite difficult to operate. This results in many flaws that arise from such complexities that cause false positives. False positives occur in which the agency unknowingly chases after the wrong intelligence and ends up empty handed and misses what they were actually looking for. They can become quite damaging for not only the agency’s reputation but also the government’s, as well as the peoples’ trust, and in job creation because of such privacy breaches. Devine in his article cites, Nigel Cannings, a technical director at Chase ITS who explains the difficulty that intelligence gathering agencies, face in differentiating between code words and everyday conversations, like the “Chinese takeaway” example in the article. All of these sources illustrate the root cause of the flaws that can be attributed to topics concerning the invasion of privacy.

 

 

         Perhaps the most important and integral part of why the American people should know about the NSA’s inner workings and how this might affect them is because it would protect their rights as citizens. Robert McKim CEO for M/S Database Marketing, illustrates this drive to towards protecting the American citizens’ rights in his article Privacy notices: What they mean and how marketers can prepare for them, that, “Congress has begun to set ground rules by taking steps to regulate privacy in industries that deal with the most sensitive personal data: financial services, health providers and e-commerce companies that market to children” (McKim, R.). It is clear however that the NSA has broken some rules lately that have negatively affected American rights, and now is feeling the repercussions of their actions. In Susan Landau’s article she made reference to former President Al Gore who stated that, “The NSA surveillance in my view violates the Constitution…The Fourth Amendment language is crystal clear. It isn’t acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the Constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is” (Landau, S.). In an effort in trying to control the massive influx of information from the people, the NSA has neglected to follow the law and thus has led to an imbalance between security and privacy, and may have caused them to overlook laws pertaining to privacy. Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist, specializing in intelligence and international affairs, explains this point perfectly in his article by stating that, “While NSA is seeking to expand its authority to cover the security of civilian government systems and even commercial systems, it has neglected to get its own house in order” (Madsen, W.).

  

          Professor Taslitz in his article illustrates the “why” behind the people being driven to protect their privacy, and this concept can be applied to many different aspects of one’s life that pertain to privacy issues. He also summed up what “right” people are looking for when it comes to privacy, “In short, we want to choose the masks that we show to others; any such loss of choice is painful, amounting almost to a physical violation of the self. When we are secretly watched, or when information that we choose to reveal to one audience is instead exposed to another, we lose that sense of choice” (Taslitz, A.). This explains that when agencies like the NSA take away privacy from the American people; they start to become defensive of their rights and will do everything in their power in order to attempt, at restoring the balance between security and privacy. This sort of explanation, is what we are seeing in the American people’s reaction towards the NSA’s domestic surveillance that has been recently brought to light to many of them.

 

          Jamali and Asadi further convey the magnitude of how the NSA is taking away the American citizens’ rights at the expense of rather insufficient and illegitimate surveillance data collection through Google searches. This is what they stated, “Information literacy skills may play a role in this type of information-seeking behavior” (Jamali, H. and Asadi, S.). So in essence literacy skills are playing a major role in information-seeking behaviors that are attributed to the NSA’s domestic surveillance, and that shouldn’t merit any further legitimate sort of surveillance to continue on much longer, and may cause further false positives.

 

           The sort of surveillances that Snowden’s leaks have shown cause false positives and Devine, a professional journalist illustrates how these false positives can really effect multiple parties not just the NSA. Devine explains that, “False positives, however, can have more wide-ranging implications. Whereas a false negative mainly affects the organization running the system, a false positive can have consequences for the rest of us.” This brings up causes for concern about the citizens’ rights that may be violated by the NSA and certain courses of action that need to be taken in order to prevent the citizens’ privacy rights from being taken away from them.

   

         All of these leaks that the news have portrayed to the people and their reaction towards the NSA’s domestic surveillance program will help ensue, that the NSA in the future will be more cautious in doing false positives, which could reduce the problems that arise from privacy concerns about their surveillance. False positives take many forms but all have a negative impact on many parties and should be avoided when given the chance to. In Devine’s article he notes George Tubin, a senior security strategist at Trusteer who explains that false positives themselves may occur when an agency is trying to play it safe and check all the procedures and information that is being presented in front of them, and that may very well cause “inconvenience” to citizens’. The NSA is always following protocols which are not a problem but it becomes one when they lose sight of the people rights. They can’t perform their jobs at the expense of the people’s privacy rights.

 

 

          But amongst all negative reactions towards the NSA, there are some who argue that the actions of the NSA are justified because security of our nation is crucial. While this argument makes a valid point our freedoms and rights are more important. It’s what our country was built on. This is also why we have a system of checks and balances not only in just the Government but also in our society as a whole. I believe in such matters like these, that law should be above all else and no matter the person or organization, they should follow those laws and not be exempt from its ruling just because of status or power in our society. Ann Finkbeiner illustrates in her article Researchers split over NSA hacking, the sort of counter argument that is being presented by those who support the NSA’s current domestic surveillance programs such as PRISM.  Finkbeiner makes the connection that many US researchers especially concerned with research based agendas accept what the NSA is doing like Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park; he asserts that, “I understand what’s in the newspaper, but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it” (Finkbeiner, A.). This approach is likely merited by the fact that these researchers rely on the funding they receive from the NSA and thus would have the likelihood of supporting the NSA’s operations. Many others believe that the NSA being granted the power in order to conduct surveillance without given warrants increases the successful outputs that the agency can muster. Susan Landau illustrates this point made in the counter argument as well by stating what the NSA director in 2001 General Michael Hayden suggested, that empowering, “the agency to collect communications…without a warrant would increase NSA’s speed and agility”  (Landau, S.).

   

         In Devine’s article he references Siraj Ahmed Shaikh who is a reader in cyber-security at Coventry University. He explains how the NSA’s action could be overlooked and forgiven because of technological reasons, at this time don’t allow for proper filtration of incoming data from the people, and that when filtration does occur it’s almost too late and false positives occur as a result. Shaikh claims that, “The reason this is relevant to the current debate is because the technology used to filter, or identify patterns of interest, is very similar,” he explains. “Ultimately, there has to be some capture of traffic at some end, and then some analysis engine is deployed for that purpose” (Devine, S.). This explains that technology used to filter incoming information is coupled with the capturing of that of information indiscriminately at some point and then the analysis of that information is performed right away without proper filtration. Shaikh then merits that false positives are almost then impossible to avoid, and that the NSA shouldn’t be blamed for such “inevitable” events that occur beyond their control. I believe however that the process of gathering information can be separated and relevant data can retained and then non-relevant data that creates false positives can be discarded, and then in that case the NSA would be held accountable if false positives do occur. The NSA spends so much money into research and development, surely they can quickly make a way in which proper filtration of data occurs. Devine also adds, “He explains that the phrase, ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’ is rendered null and void because everyone has something to fear from a false positive” (Devine, S.). This quote describes that a false positive always effects everyone in a negative way.

 

  So in conclusion the NSA should conduct domestic surveillance on the American people but with extreme reservations and constrictions to ensure that the American people’s rights are upheld with the highest regard and honor. They should also not over step already placed boundaries regarding privacy rights so that they may be less inclined to be involved in false positives. If the NSA delivers on the statements listed above they can have the power to start healing the broken trust that the American people have held against them and start to build and maintain a respectable relationship with the government and American people. Domestic surveillance is not going away and in fact is a necessity for many aspects of our society, but American rights are the most vital aspect of our society.