NSA's Spying On The Internet
Edward Snowden, ex-employee of the U.S. National Security Agency, has stirred a hornet’s nest with his revelation of the NSA’s Internet spying. The whistleblower had alleged that the Agency, over a period of 10 years from 2001-2011, had spied on American citizens in a bid to “stop terrorist attacks” since the destructive September 11, 2011 attacks on the World Trade Center.
The whistleblowing had raised several questions on the validity of the surveillance, particularly on the issue of whether or not the National Security Agency had encroached upon American citizens’ privacy.
Origins of the Surveillance
The surveillance program had its roots under former President George W. Bush, who issued an executive order authorizing phone surveillance by the NSA. The executive order was given based on the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the FISA of 1978, which authorizes the Justice Department to order electronic surveillance – via phone or camera – of an individual believed to be an agent acting under the jurisdiction of a foreign power.
However, the Executive Order made use of the stipulations given in a certain section of the FISA that allowed the NSA to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and be able to conduct surveillance without having to seek warrants from the FISC.
The surveillance was eventually, of course, expanded to include spying upon people’s Internet activities by reading Internet metadata and Internet protocol logs.
Privacy Issues of Internet Surveillance
The center of the controversy is the question: “Just how unlawful and how invasive was the NSA Internet spying?”
It is revealed by Snowden’s documents that NSA.gov had engaged in widespread collection of email and Internet metadata of various targets under the authority of both the Bush and Obama administrations. According to Julian Sanchez, this is the most invasive part of the surveillance as individuals these days are extremely connected to the Internet.
A memo circulated within the Justice Department in 2007 claims that the program was intended solely to study foreigners’ online habits and not citizens of the US. This memo further details that if the trail during the analysis led to a U.S. citizen, operatives and analysts are directed to stop. Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Weinstein, however, argued that broadening the surveillance to include U.S. citizens – blatantly suggesting that they invade on American citizens’ privacy – would reveal a wealth of information that would be useful for foreign intelligence.
In the end, Weinstein’s argument was heeded and the NSA was authorized by the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to include Internet activities of US citizens to a certain degree. The expanded surveillance was governed by a set of rules dubbed as the “Supplemental Procedures” and was observed for two years under the Obama administration.
Although the government had stated that the collection was harmless, Sanchez indicates that reading into one’s Internet protocol logs constitute an invasion of privacy, describing it as similar to reading into one’s diary and stumbling across a detailed record of one’s daily activities. It would be like having someone picking into our brain, so to speak.
It makes sense. Our activities in the Internet are logged by way of our IP addresses. If someone is able to get hold of our Internet logs, everything is laid bare. Analysts will have a wealth of information that can reveal several things about our personality including our political inclinations. Our IP addresses are recorded in each activity that we make, including:
- answering surveys
- entering discussion forums
- reading emails
- clicking on ads among others
In psychology parlance, this constitutes information that can be used for psychoanalysis and behavioral studies.
In other words, if the U.S. government wanted to know what kinds of philosophies we adhere to, it simply has to look at our IP logs for behavioral patterns. With this kind of information, they could indict anyone for treason or terrorism by basis of their online activities alone. That makes the surveillance destructive and invasive as Sanchez had described.
Citations:
Michael Whitlock is an aspiring lawyer who is currently taking up Law at the University of Southern California. When he isn't busy reading law books, Michael Whitlock is busy writing articles for AttorneyOne.com through whom he aspires to inform the public about their rights as well as discuss current events.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Michael Whitlock
Reader Comments