Post on 04-Jun-2018
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The Impact of PRISM 1
The Impact of PRISM
Caitlin Wilkinson
Barry University
Professor Esposito
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The Impact of PRISM
The National Security Agency is an intelligence agency operating under the Department
of Defense that is designed to monitoring and analyzing communications (Greenwald &
MacAskill, 2013). Because they are monitoring communications for the safety of The United
States of America, they operate behind the scenes to collect, decode, translate and analyze data
from both inside and out of the United States (Wikipedia). They have been given the go ahead to
gather communications intelligence through multiple means, including wiretapping, information
request, and mass surveillance through multiple acts that have increased the NSAs legal
abilities. A few acts in particular that have granted the NSA additional freedoms include the
Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA(Greenwald & MacAskill,
2013). The most recent power the NSA has been granted is through PRISM, which allows the
NSA to get around some of the limitations in previous acts. Because the NSA monitors and
collects information without individual consent, there are multiple concerns about the program
encroaching on rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).
In essence, PRISM allows the NSA to use the backdoors of online companies like
Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Youtube, Facebook and Apple in order to retrieve information about
clients in question. This backdoor access was granted post 9/11 following the Patriot Act in an
attempt to monitor foreign intelligence. This allows the NSA to retrieve information from clients
of these companies from/in foreign countries as well as individuals in communication with
others in foreign countries (Solove, 2011). While FISA has similar allowances, PRISM allows
the NSA to conduct their searches without individual warrants and security checks. In addition,
PRISM allows the NSA to do this without informing the companies of their intentions
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beforehand. This in itself presents an issue; FISA was designed to allow the NSA surveillance
privileges while maintaining privacy protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights (Greenwald &
MacAskill, 2013). According to the presentation that Snowden prepared, the NSA presented the
argument that FISA provided privacy protections for those who didnt deserve it (2013),
referencing those living outside of the United States. The Patriot of 2001 already enabled the
government to confiscate personal information under section 215 and to monitor you if you are
under suspicion of having contact with a suspect under section 411. PRISM further detracts the
Bill of Rights by encroaching on the First and Fourth and Ninth amendments in numerous ways.
One issue with PRISM and the NSA in general is their disregard for the 9 thamendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall notbe construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people (Bill Of Rights). Those individuals who are being
monitored by NSA under the PRISM program are not privy to that fact, otherwise the
information collection would be jeopardized. In addition, if the companies that PRISM is
backdooring are notified, they are not allowed to inform the client being monitored. As it stands,
the citizens of the United States have a fundamental right to privacy not only under the 4th
amendment but as an American citizen. The manner in which PRISM allows the NSA to operate
strips citizens of fundamental rights of privacy, freedom, and usage of personal property; the
NSA operates on the notion that there is always intelligence to be gathered and that everyone is a
potential target(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).
The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to privacy from unreasonable search and
seizures(Bill of Rights). One argument against PRISM is that it violates our right to privacy that
was adhered to in FISA. According to Solove (2011), If you have nothing to hide, you have
nothing to fear was the general counter-argument towards anti-NSA sentiments. The Nothing
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to Hide, Nothing to Fear argument has one fatal flaw: everything has something to hide,
whether you are conscious of it or not. Information that is retrieved can be misconstrued due to
aggregation or exclusion because those who are accessing your information are merely drawing
their conclusions from small bits of data. Those small bits of data can also be distorted. An
example of data distortion can be found in Soloves article; if you purchased a few books about
how to cook meth, then to the NSA who is collecting your data, it could appear that you are
operating an illegal meth house when in reality you were gathering research for a novel (2011).
When you dont recognize that there is a problem or you acknowledge the issue but protest that
the benefits outweigh the privacy sacrifice, it allows programs like PRISM to further infiltrate
into your fourth amendment rights by accumulating data without reasonable cause. In the case
with PRISM, reasonable cause is typically that you have had contact with suspects or have
interacted with someone from a foreign country(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).
To tie everything together, the First Amendment guarantees the public the freedom of
speech(Bill of Rights). This fundamental right should continue on to protect citizens when they
are on the internet or using communication devices that can be monitored. That right has been
blurred by the NSA because everything that is said can be processed and judged to determine if it
is potentially problematic. A fair example of the First Amendment being ignored by the NSA
would be an individual speaking to someone in a foreign country, in this example France, and
could complain about the United States government. A conversation about the structure and
issues perceived within the US Government between the US citizen and the French citizen taking
place on AIM could be monitored under PRISM by the NSA and both individuals could be
monitored from then on due to their speech. The US citizen is guaranteed the freedom of speech
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to express opinion, and should not be treated like a potential traitor to the United States of
America.
While PRISM is fundamentally a fair method of protection, it is also extremely
problematic due to its disregard for fundamental US rights guaranteed to citizens. The Bill of
Rights has been determined to be dismissible by the right powers and under the right
circumstances to be determined by the NSA. Today, privacy is a faade fabricated to provide a
false sense of security for US citizens, which is convenient to the NSA; they can monitor
communications of unwary users who believe that their purchase history, video streams, online
chats and data are safe and the NSA can continue on fairly uninhibited.
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References
Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill. (n.d.). (2013, June 6)NSA PRISM program taps into user dataof Apple, Google and others. Retrieved from
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
National security agency. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
Solove, D. (2011, May 15). Why privacy matters even when you have 'nothing to hide'. Retrievedfromhttp://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
The bill of rights. (n.d.). Provos. Retrieved fromhttp://discoverthomasjefferson.com/articles/BillOfRights.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-datahttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-datahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data