The Pros And Cons Of Edward Snowden

993 Words4 Pages
When it comes to government information and service projects the government’s knowledge of you is power over you. Surveillance from the government will sometimes catch a few criminals but it more often incriminates and imprisons people who are not guilty of anything. Government surveillance skyrocketed to a level it never needed to reach. With government projects like project prism the objectives are to obtain as much information as possible. Some of the things these projects do are aggregate U.S. citizens’ personal information like their ideologies, religious, and political views. Once the information is gathered it’s nearly guaranteed if used it will be used against you. In all instances where there was a large amount of data obtained on…show more content…
Information of US. citizens; every day Americans with no ties to illegal activity or terrorism. Civil rights advocates have argued for years that the government would use the Patriot Act to conduct such wholesale data collection. The government denied it. (Yahoo) As a planet we have seen this type of government surveillance before. In Germany, the USSR, Eastern Europe, but we are letting history repeat itself. We are allowing the government to amass an inordinant power. The NSA and the government consider these programs beneficial but the cons certainly outweigh the pros. While an enormous amount of Americans are outraged many are comfortable with the notion that since they don’t partake in illegal activity they are unaffected by data collection. But these arguments are thin because law changes every day. What is legal today can be illegal the tomorrow and vis versa. As a society we don’t really understand why surveillance is bad and why we should be wary of it. (Harvard Law…show more content…
If information the NSA harvested is used against someone there is little that can be done to fight back. In recent court cases it has been proven difficult for the accused to even prove the government gathered information at all! The main danger of these secret government agenices is that the operate outside and above U.S. law. With a huge amount of power in the hands of individuals working in the NSA a dangerous dynamic exists where misconduct, abuse of power, or coercion could easily abound. Even if Americans have trust for the president and the NSA to do the right thing the data that has been gathered will exist forever. And it is a databank of personal information about U.S. citizens with no ties to illegal activity. Clearly there is a direct breach in the Fourth Amendment with these implications. The personal information that the government obtained will be readily available to any of those in power in the future with any existing technology available. The NSA has already shared raw intelligence data and of course more sharing of civilians’ data can take place in the future. Recently the U.S. government sold data to Israel and British intelligence. All of these actions are under the guise of domestic and international security. Too much power has been put in the hands of individuals, which is always dangerous. Individuals have biases, personal feelings, grudges, and political ideologies. Should flawed
Show More
Related

  • The Pros And Cons Of Edward Snowden

    947 Words  | 4 Pages

    With Edward Snowden having released confidential information to the media, which unintentionally released to the public, we now have to question whether this is ethically correct. Even though his intention is to raise awareness of what NSA have been doing till date, we think that this should not be the way to inform the public. If we put ourselves in Edward Snowden’s shoes, with all the confidential information that we have on our hands right now, we will be thinking “Who controls the people in control

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Edward Snowden

    566 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rick Ramgattie Thursday, 5 Feb 2015 CPSC 321 Short Paper 2 Ethics, Morality of Edward Snowden The duty of a nation is to ensure the safety of its citizens. However, the presence of technology makes it difficult to maintain national security. The misuse of technology has posed internal and external threats on the United States. Under the authority of the U.S. the National Security Agency has taken various measures to mitigate the risks against its national security. As commendable as that may sound

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons To The National Security Agency

    1486 Words  | 6 Pages

    that the NSA could be or is looking into their daily life and tracking wherever they go to. In reality you are most likely not being watched by the NSA at all in your lifetime even though it might seem a bit overbearing. Another argument towards the pro side of NSA surveillance is that it helps stop and prevent terrorist attacks. This helps to keep the citizens of America safe and out of harms way. The NSA has stopped a total of fifty-six terrorist attacks that were in the planning or were about to

    Read More

More about The Pros And Cons Of Edward Snowden

Open Document