Term Paper on "Security Privacy"

Term Paper 9 pages (2504 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Security vs. Privacy in the National Intelligence Debate

Too often, when people are afraid, privacy -- as well as other civil liberties -- is sacrificed on the altar security. There is the erroneous assumption that the transformation of free societies into police states will ensure security from external and internal threats. The chief among these threats in recent years in the West has been terrorism. The September 11th attacks on the United States were brazen and tragic. Thousands of lives were lost, and many Western nations began to cower in fear of similarly scaled attacks. The knee-jerk reaction of the public was to call for greater security and protection from these threats so as to prevent terrorism in the future. But how do we provide such security when terrorists could conceivably be anywhere? How can an amorphous enemy be fought?

Terrorist organizations don't have borders or seats in the United Nations. Conventional responses to ensure security evaporate in effectiveness. The overall response has been to undermine privacy rights -- especially in the Untied States -- as the government argues that terrorism can only be prevented through continued invasions into the personal lives of citizens who have not otherwise been found guilty of any crime. The recent revelation that the President Bush told the NSA in October 2001 to start monitoring all international communications of people with terrorist links is just one of the latest battles in the effort to balance security and privacy (Donohue, 2006). Truthfully, the intelligence community needs to be able to collect information on threats to the nation in order to improve security. However, the cost of security is proving to be exceptionally high as government agencies use their newfound (and some old ones) powers to infiltrate the lives of innocent citizens. The long-term implications of this assault on privacy rights should be taken quite seriously. The purpose of this study is to examine the current developments as the intelligence community uses the premise of security to assault privacy rights.

The current furor over the invasion of privacy by the NSA in the name of security is predicated on the unfortunate fact that these investigations were led entirely without any kind of oversight. The U.S. system of government is constructed on a system of checks and balances in order to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. When one part of the government engages in these kinds of activities, especially those that threaten the civil liberties of individuals, there is a very real danger for abuse. Of course, this most recent example is just that -- recent. The intelligence community in the United States has long covertly used its power to spy on American citizens, often without judicial oversight and rarely with any significant cause.

For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the NSA -- working in concert with other intelligence agencies from around the world -- developed a series of satellites and computers that allowed it to monitor nearly all electronic communications taking place (U.S. monitors, 2000). This surveillance system was dubbed Echelon, and it operated entirely without oversight from other branches of the government. The NSA used the system to keep tabs on any American citizen that they had an interest in. The potential for abuse of this system is enormous, but should not be unexpected. During the height of the Cold War, after all, the NSA, CIA and FBI each ran similar operations in order to root out the supposed communist threat among ordinary American citizens. These activities were apparently stopped in 1978 when Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to prevent unchecked executive surveillance of American citizens (Donohue, 2006). The September 11th attacks merely gave the intelligence community and the executive branch of the U.S. government new justification for undermining the privacy rights of American citizens.

Since September 11, 2001, privacy rights in the United States have been under continual and, in general, public attack. All of this is done in the same of a need for heightened security. With an already unnerving amount of discretionary power in such matters before the terrorist attacks, the post-September 11th world is no subject to even greater threats to civil liberties (Heymann, 2002). Because the citizenry felt so insecure after so many people were so blatantly killed, a new justification for the expansion of government power presented itself. The private lives of citizens are one arena in which the government had previously had difficulty infiltrating. But with people afraid of more attacks, it was much easier to push through new measures that allow the government -- in particular the intelligence community -- to monitor and record the intimate activities of individuals. Purchasing habits, phone calls, Internet searches, or library withdrawals are all now the domain of the government. They have already extensively accessed this type of information, as well as many other kinds, all with the ostensible goal of protecting the nation. The actual net effect is to gather and catalog private data on American citizens for any purpose the government may one day see fit.

At its most basic, the debate over privacy vs. security in the United States hinges on the degree to which national security concerns should supersede Constitutional rights (Munro and Stone, 2001). Public fear, distrust, and disgust in the wake of the September 11th attacks helped boost budgets in the security community and expand the permissiveness of surveillance of American citizens, so long as it was ostensibly done in the name of national security. Since September 11th, governmental controls and restrictions on executive surveillance have been significantly relaxed. The intense fear of another attack on American soil or its citizens has meant that most people were willing to allow this kind of surveillance. What most people fail to recognize, however, is that modern surveillance techniques is quite unlike what is seen in old gangster movies or Cold War documentaries. The extent of digital information available for surveillance is staggering and significantly compromises individual privacy rights (Donohue, 2006).

In the past, putting an individual under surveillance might have meant tailing them in a car to find out where they go and when, or getting a judge's authorization to listen in on phone conversations to discover evidence of suspected illegal activities. Today, the digital information revolution has made these techniques largely obsolete. Investigators in the intelligence community are able to gather a much wider array of detailed information on individuals and then use complex computer programs and algorithms to reveal behavior patterns consistent with terrorist or criminal activities. The intelligence community can still listen in on phone conversations and have an agent follow an individual around town. However, there are more extensive sources of information. For instance, credit card purchases can be tracked to provide a detailed description of where a person goes and what he buys. Bank records can reveal where money is coming from and in what amounts. Internet search terms can illustrate the kind of information that a person looks for, as well as what sites are visited. Email correspondence can be intercepted and read. The intelligence community has even demanded information from libraries on what their patrons are checking out. These represent just a few examples of the kind of data mining that is taking place. Any one of these sources provides the intelligence community with extensive access to the personal lives of individuals in the United States.

Polls consistently show that Americans are increasingly worried about the sanctity of their own personal information (Bennett, 2006). Most of this concern is directed at malicious individuals, such as hackers or spammers, who use the information taken to their own advantage. While such invasions of privacy can be costly, they are nothing compared to the dangers of government agencies commanding the same kind of power to invade digital privacy. The lack of controls on the way this information can be accessed, and by whom, should be troubling to anyone who ears abuses by Big Government (Bennett, 2006). The government is already tapping into this type of information, in a digital realm where individual privacy rights are still uncertain (McMasters, 2006). Simply put, the right to privacy on the Internet -- for example -- is legally unclear. Can an individual have any reasonable expectation of privacy if they willingly post their information on various sites around the Internet? Is it an invasion of privacy if the NSA or the FBI uses advanced computer programs to troll the Internet and compile this disparate information into a singular whole? These are questions with unclear answers. Nonetheless, the government agencies involved in these actions justify their methods by arguing that it is the only means by which national security can be achieved (McMasters, 2006). As a result, the executive branch of the U.S. government employs methods that invade individual privacy, threaten 1st Amendment rights, and challenge the implicit freedom of association.

Efforts to turn the United States into a surveillance state are based on the premise that increased observation… READ MORE

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