The Benefits Of Mass Surveillance

Imagine every time you send one of your friends a text, they and someone else privately reads it, and that someone else is the government. There is no need to imagine anymore because your imagination is already a reality. For years now, the U.S. has been secretly conducting mass surveillance on everyone. Not until Edward Snowden, a former employee of the NSA (National Security Agency), exposed how much data the U.S. had collected on its citizens in 2013, it was not known to the public. Since then, controversy has stirred up on whether it is justifiable for the U.S. to invade its people’s privacy in the sake of national security. It is not justifiable, nor constitutional, for the U.S. to invade its people’s privacy through the means of conducting …show more content…
Mass surveillance is not the solution to our war on terrorism,“Domestic mass surveillance is not the solution to ending terrorism, and it never will be” (Sednik). Terrorism will never be tarnished, but it could be limited, but conducting surveillance does not even help limit terrorism. Conducting surveillance does not even ensure that motives or plots could be found,“That could include the identities of terrorists who influenced or directed the attack; such information, if pursued, could prevent future plots. Or the iPhone might contain nothing of value” (Bratton, Miller). In the San Bernardino case, the government believes that everything lies inside of the iPhone of Farook. They are wrong. Going through all of these measures just to access the phone of Farook may not even turn out in their favor because the phone may not even include anything. The U.S. have been going through severe measures to keep a secret eye on it’s people,“This was also true of Bush's warrantless terrorist surveillance program,... through which the NSA and FBI are alleged to have obtained communications about foreign parties from U.S.-based communication service providers” (Raul). In this case, information was obtained illegally about foreign parties, but nothing was done. The U.S. may be taking severe and unconstitutional measures just to view other people’s privacy, but no terrorist attacks have been …show more content…
The idea that mass surveillance limits terrorism is false,“The response from proponents has been some variation of the idea that we need mass surveillance to fight terrorism; that by weakening the NSA's abilities, we are letting the terrorists win” (Sednik). As stated before, terrorism can not be completely destroyed. On top of that, it is very misunderstood that the N.S.A. fights against terrorism. The N.S.A. does not fight against terrorism so conducting surveillance does not help against fighting it. Terrorism is fought by Homeland Security. Some may believe that it is more important to value the country’s safety than one’s privacy. Believing that one’s privacy is not important is false,“We must not falsely be convinced that our right to privacy is less important than national security” (Sednik). As previously said, if we are convinced that our privacy is not valuable, then the government will take advantage of us, and our world could become reminiscent of the one in “1984”. Privacy is the most valuable thing you are granted as an American, and if you are removed of that, then you have been a victim of complete injustice. The biggest argument of national security is that conducting mass surveillance does not violate our fourth amendment to immunity from illegal searches and seizures without probable cause. Some say that