The National Security Agency (NSA), “an administration firmly committed to preserving all surveillance tools in a world that now includes al Qaeda, Islamic State and many other terror groups” (Mukasey), originally came to be as a quiet, powerful entity in the United States’ government, committed to protecting the nation. Their operation can be traced back to the early 1950s when President Truman officially founded the organization. Since then, they have worked diligently to protect the United States from dangers such as terrorism and espionage. Until recent times, they were quite widely unrecognized. Their business– and existence, for that matter– were unknown to the majority of the public. But in 2013, it became public knowledge that the NSA was spying in a very unnecessary fashion on its population. Surveillance of a population has its benefits, but the magnitude at which it is being performed in the United States of America has far surpassed an acceptable point.
The initial aim of the organization was to protect the citizens from threats. Conveniently enough, the threat of terrorism in the United States had arisen on a large scale at around the same time as the ability to collectively survey a whole civilization fell into the hands of its government. The World-Wide Web was released in the early 90s and was just beginning to come to its fruition at the turn of the 21st century. At the same time, the United States was attacked by al Qaeda in the very tragic event globally recognized as “9/11”. This nation had just suffered the most terrible event in its history and its government proposed that the best course of action would be to try their hand at tracking down those who orchestrated the attack and anyone who could potentially do more to harm the country. This coincidence made it very easy to persuade the nation that it actively needed a way to protect itself from all angles from every possible threat. Clearly, anyone in shock from such an event would accept this claim. The terms of this “protection” were not well articulated and the NSA took the opportunity to use this miscommunication in tangent with the helpless consent of the people and their newfound technology to access the corners of their lives that were previously unavailable. This minor miscommunication at the fault of the citizens led up to the extremely particulate mass surveillance that the nation faces today.
This flagrant behavior has gone far beyond the levels at which many citizens would neither allow nor imagine. Today, the NSA is noted by many sources to have access to the devices of over one billion individuals across the globe. The organization does a great quantity of nosing when it comes to phone calls. “The three billion phone calls made in the U.S. each day are snatched up by the [NSA], which stores each call’s metadata (the phone numbers of the parties, date and time, length of call, etc.) for five years” (Hightower). Their far-reaching grasp on society has been provided to them by social media superpowers, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Verizon Wireless. But the quantity of associated incorporations is not limited to those listed. Nathan Ross of University Wire notes, “businesses like Buffer in California … are providing their employees with wristwatches that allow them to monitor things like sleeping habits, exercise, nutrition, and happiness … for purposes of increasing productivity and efficiency.” The plethora of platforms on which the NSA can operate (such as PRISM, XKeyscore, FASCIA, Optic Nerve, and Boundless Informant) allow them the ability to peer into what one would see on their cellular device, desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or other technology of the sort. They would be able to know what that person would search, type, like, hear– everything. This information would make it easy for an NSA operant to make inferences about the person’s lifestyle and personality.
The NSA’s programs have come a long way into modern times and have changed significantly over the years. The current, obvious purpose of their surveillance is no longer to protect the nation, but rather to monitor the habits and interests of people. One might struggle to find any reason to catalogue the lives of random citizens, the majority of whom have no intention to cause harm to any demographic in even the slightest of manners. Many speculate that the NSA spies on everyday people so that they can find not only international threats but also criminals within our own country. Thibault Serlet of WordPress states that the NSA has been noted to share their data “with the DEA and the FBI to help with their investigations of suspects at home … it appears now that [the spying] is being used to enhance the oppressive capabilities of other branches and bureaucracies and to bring us … closer to a dystopian police state.”
The United States’ government has a relatively firm grip on its people. Dubbed “The Land of the Free” for centuries, the name might ring true in select instances, but the facade of freedom is the mechanism that gives the country the authority it has. This is arguably more effective than other nations that rely on brute dictation because the citizens of the United States have been convinced that their government is playing on their side. This most likely would cause the people to become socially malleable and pliant to nearly anything the government decides is the proper course of action. The fall of the World Trade Center is a great example of this. This sort of control has been staged for hundreds of years and only in the last four years has it been recognized. Their mass surveillance in its current form has been most likely happening for at least a decade, and one could say it is very similar to any other form of control they have had in the past. The only difference is the magnitude.
One may ask if this level of surveillance is a good thing or not. The answer to this question is not simply a “yes-or-no” kind of answer, but it can be explained in a few sentences: Mass surveillance can be a good thing, both for the population and for the United States government. The protection it offers is surely worthwhile and it allows a fair amount of control. But the current extent of the NSA’s program is unnecessary. They cannot gain much more power in their current form of government without completely transforming into a completely different, more oppressive breed of society. Therefore, they can continue to perform such actions as cataloguing the lives of every individual on the premise that there is a minute chance that they could be dangerous, but should be conscious of the values and wishes of the people.
Works Cited
Ross, Nathan. “The world isn’t ready for an Orwellian worklife.” University Wire 28 Sept. 2015: N.p. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.
Mukasey, Michael B. “Impeding the fight against terror.” Wall Street Journal 13 May 2015: A.13. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.
Hightower, James; AlterNet. “8 Terrifying facts about NSA surveillance.” Alternet. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
Serlet, Thibault, and Logan Robinson. “Why would the government want to spy on me?” WordPress. WordPress, n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2016.