It isn’t a rare occurrence that people find themselves worrying about someone watching their every move. While this usually isn’t the case, there is something of a similar nature becoming more and more prevalent right under everyone’s noses. As of June 2013, it was revealed to the general populations of several countries including the United States, as well as any other interested parties in the world, the existence of numerous surveillance programs being run by the NSA and other local and global government organizations. At this point, not even two years after these events transpired, only about 5% of Americans still haven’t heard of these programs according to a recent panel by the Pew Research Center (Madden). The controversy here is that the government claims these programs
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national security and counterterrorism” while a majority of the standard population finds them invasive and in breach of rights (Bergen). These claims of essentialness are, however, hard to argue for due in part to how secretive everything still is as well as the low turnouts reported from the programs. Although surveillance programs by the NSA have the possibility of discovering and halting terrorist activity, because of the breach of privacy and low actual rate of discoveries due to them, the creation and enforcement of such programs should be suspended. The first question on the minds of most of the people who don’t know much about what’s going on with these programs (which could theoretically be everyone if information about them is being withheld) is usually “What is being monitored and/or collected, and why?” According to the documents leaked by Snowden as well as information revealed by the NSA and other groups afterwards, information being collected, tracked, recorded, or otherwise monitored includes, but is not limited to: metadata of phone calls made within the U.S. (metadata in this sense includes the calling and receiving numbers and the length of the call), Emails,
national security and counterterrorism” while a majority of the standard population finds them invasive and in breach of rights (Bergen). These claims of essentialness are, however, hard to argue for due in part to how secretive everything still is as well as the low turnouts reported from the programs. Although surveillance programs by the NSA have the possibility of discovering and halting terrorist activity, because of the breach of privacy and low actual rate of discoveries due to them, the creation and enforcement of such programs should be suspended. The first question on the minds of most of the people who don’t know much about what’s going on with these programs (which could theoretically be everyone if information about them is being withheld) is usually “What is being monitored and/or collected, and why?” According to the documents leaked by Snowden as well as information revealed by the NSA and other groups afterwards, information being collected, tracked, recorded, or otherwise monitored includes, but is not limited to: metadata of phone calls made within the U.S. (metadata in this sense includes the calling and receiving numbers and the length of the call), Emails,