Since September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the War on Terror, the United States has become heavily focused on combating terrorism, both at home and abroad (Greenwald). However, unfortunately for the American people, combating terror has come to be largely synonymous with collecting intelligence on the American people. Never has this become so apparent as it was after Edward Snowden, who worked for a contractor with the United States government, downloaded 1.5 million files from his employer and turned these files over to the American media.
The resulting firestorm changed almost everything. Snowden is now in exile, condemned for participating in what essentially amounts to treason; however, the American people are now left to wonder what should be done with the information that he released to the world. Through the leaks, the American public became aware that the NSA issued a secret order that allowed them to collect the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers without ever telling these customers that the order occurred; it also used a program called Prism to enter through “back doors” in the Internet and collect information about citizens and their activities online (Landau, 2014). The information shows plans for cyber attacks on foreign nations, hacks on foreign computers, and data taps that take private information from the American public and integrate it into the massive cache of data that the NSA has been storing for many years (Landau, 2014; Landau, 2015). It is also likely that the information that has been released recently is only part of the problem and only part of the picture: Snowden was able to leave Hawaii with millions of files, but these files present only part of the picture of surveillance in the American government today (Greenwald, 2013).
The problem with answering the question of whether the Snowden data has been used to stop terrorism or crime in general is that there is no real way to answer the question itself—the NSA and the other agencies involved are, by their very nature, extraordinarily clandestine (Lee, 2015). According to sources in the government, the data that has been taken secretly from Americans and others has led to direct action and lives saved on 54 different occasions (Landau, 2015). However, there is no real way to verify this information: due to the secrecy requirements under which the NSA operates, they have been largely unwilling to give any more information about the activities that the organization has been party to in recent years (Greenwald, 2013).
Most researchers interested in this particular case have noted that despite the massive amount of information that has been gathered about the American public and individuals living within the borders of the United States, very few investigations and official charges have been filed using this information. The USA PATRIOT Act has given the American government unprecedented access to the personal information of many American citizens, and many citizens are not even aware that their personal information has been collected by the government (Greenwald, 2013; Miller and Walsh, 2016). The USA PATRIOT Act, passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, does provide the government with the ability to collect all this information—but many question whether this particular piece of legislation is one that should be in existence today (Greenwald, 2013; Landau, 2014). The USA PATRIOT Act, in and of itself, has been a controversial piece of legislation. Even today, there are many who disagree with the use of this piece of legislation by the government, saying that it is unconstitutional and should be banned. This legislation is the foundation upon which most of the NSA policies have been built.
There are arguments, of course, that any protections against terrorism are good protections, and that any lives saved are worth the invasion of privacy that the government is committing against its citizens. There are even arguments that suggest that if individuals have nothing to hide from the government—that is, that they are doing nothing wrong—then why should these people be afraid of government intervention or surveillance. However, privacy and the right to privacy from the government are things that are very highly prized by the American people as a whole. It is not surprising that this policy of wiretapping and sculling metadata from the Internet has had significant backlash with the American people (Landau, 2014).
One of the most pressing questions regarding the issues associated with the NSA leaks is the question of how much security is really necessary. Every country needs to have the ability to keep its own internal secrets for the sake of its people, but the extent of that security is what should be constantly re-assessed. When a government has the ability to obtain too much information too easily, that government almost certainly has the ability to become a government that is too powerful. While the United States might never evolve into a true dictatorship, the fear that the United States government might be watching one’s every move is undesirable as well.
After the attacks on 9/11, the way that the American people understood security changed. The attacks on 9/11 were the start of a paradigm shift for the United States and her security policies; the people felt that some of their freedoms were worth trading for the greater security that was offered. Today, people cannot carry liquids through security in the airport and now many are finding out that the NSA is tracking their data; these seemingly small incursions into the private lives of American citizens in the name of security are worrisome, particularly if the security features do not seem to be having the desired impact. After viewing the outcomes of many of the cases that were associated with the information that Snowden released to the American people, it is very hard to say whether there have been very many benefits to amassing so much information (Miller & Walsh, 2016).
Thus, the question remains: if the government is not using the bulk of this information to find and prosecute terrorists, what is the government using this information for? There is a massive amount of information publicly available to anyone interested in looking, so the question of why the government needs to use these methods to find information about Americans remains a very pertinent one.
As time goes on, it is likely that more information will become available about the wiretapping and metadata collection, and it is also likely that more cases will emerge in which the NSA demonstrates that it has made good use of the information it has gleaned from the American people. However, there are still—and there should be—serious concerns about the legitimacy of privacy laws in the United States when the government can so easily violate the privacy of so many with so few knowing about these violations. The whole issue is shrouded with such secrecy that it is almost impossible to get a clear picture of the issue. Clarity should come insofar as the government is able to provide it while still protecting the American people.
There must be a way to balance the needs of the government—particularly the needs of the government insofar as security is concerned— against the rights of the citizenry. Both sides like to use inflammatory language when describing the issues associated with security concerns and privacy concerns; in reality, there are many different factors that must be weighed against each other when considering the alternatives. Without weighing these alternatives, the issue becomes one of pure ideology rather than an issue that is associated with potential lives and the risk to those American lives that comes with failing to develop thorough intelligence (Miler & Walsh, 2016).
The massive amounts of information that the NSA has been able to take from the actions of average citizens is indeed worrisome, but the idea that the NSA should be completely barred from obtaining information secretly is also worrisome. Instead of focusing on ideology, the American people as a whole should focus on developing new strategies for managing the information that is taken, and for dictating how and when the NSA must reveal that it is taking information from American citizens. These structures might provide more peace of mind for Americans and more accountability for the NSA, while still allowing the NSA to fulfill its role in ensuring American security (Lee, 2014).
References
Greenwald, G. (2013). XKeyscore: NSA tool collects' nearly everything a user does on the internet'. The Guardian, 31.
Landau, S. (2013). Making sense from Snowden: What's significant in the NSA surveillance revelations. IEEE Security & Privacy, (4), 54-63.
Landau, S. (2014). Highlights from making sense of Snowden, part II: What's significant in the NSA revelations. Security & Privacy, IEEE, 12(1), 62-64.
Lee, N. (2015). The Afterlife of Total Information Awareness and Edward Snowden’s NSA Leaks. InCounterterrorism and Cybersecurity (pp. 151-182). Springer International Publishing.
Miller, S., & Walsh, P. (2016). The Nsa Leaks, Edward Snowden, and The Ethics and Accountability of Intelligence Collection. Ethics and the Future of Spying: Technology, National Security and Intelligence Collection, 193.
