The NSA’s Surveillance Program, Essay Example

The NSA’s Surveillance Program and its Impact on Privacy and Civil Liberties

The essay is based on the Surveillance Program of the NSA and it also discusses the impacts of this program on the civil liberties and on privacy. The Oversight Board of the Civil Liberties and the Privacy Board revealed that the surveillance program of the National Security Agency (NSA) was efficient at combatting the terrorism and also collecting foreign intelligence. But, after some time questions were raised because this program’s core features impacted the United States civilians (Van Buren).  This essay shows the recommendations on how NSA can protect civil liberties and the privacy of its citizens. Moreover, this essay will define the key terms used in the arguments with the help of the sources used. The main term that will be discussed will be ‘privacy’. As the surveillance program of the NSA affects the civil liberties and privacy of the citizens. Other major terms used to present the argument are the publicness, metadata, foreign intelligence vs foreignness purpose; upstream; procedure of minimization and ‘about’ collection (Jarvis).

Some of the characteristics of the surveillance program of the NSA are based on the argument that raises questions. The issues raised are that whether the Board’s recommendation and the implementation of this surveillance program would separate the fears as identified by Jeff Jarvis. Also how the government of the U.S would stop using the personal data of communication (Jarvis).  The Central Security Service of the National Agency of Security (CSS/NSA) leads the Government of the U.S in a cryptology that shows both the Assurance of Information (IA) and also the Intelligence Signals (SIGINT). These involves the services and the products that allows the Network Operations of Computers (CNO) in order to get the benefit for the Nation as well as the allies under every circumstance (NSA, 2014).The mission for the Assurance of Information combats the formidable issue that prevents the adversaries of foreign countries from getting access to the classified or sensitive secure information of the country. On the other hand, the Intelligence Signal mission processes collects, disseminates the information of intelligence from the signals of foreign countries. This helps in the purposes of counterintelligence and also for intelligence operations for supporting the military corps. NSA also allows the operations of Network Warfare which helps in defeating the terrorists and their organizations both locally and internationally. In short, NSA programs are persistent with the laws of the U.S and the protection of civil liberties and privacy.

It has been more than a year since the report of the initial story of the surveillance programs of the National Agency of Security (NSA) were based on the leaks from the previous contractor of NSA named Snowden Edward. Yet, this domestic communication remained mostly mired in a general debate over the exchanges between the individual privacy and the national security. So, it is a right time to initiate the overall cost weighting and the advantages more closely (Liptak & Michael). As the officials of the intelligence have strongly protected the benefits of this NSA program, they have presented evidence which is a little difficult to prove their value. Some of the research and the starting analysis show that the advantages highlighted in these NSA programs are termed dubious (NSA, 2014). There are 3 various researches i.e. one is from the Review Group of the President on the Communications and Intelligence technologies; other is the Civil liberties Oversight Board and Privacy Board and the third is the International Program of Security of the New Foundations of America (NSA, 2014). The issues are raised in the value of a bulk programs collection which stops the plots of the terrorist and to safeguard the domestic security (Jarvis). Meanwhile, regarding the costs of these programs, there has been a less discussion as to how these programs impacts the liberty and privacy beyond these costs. Specifically, how these programs impacts the economy of the United States, the security of the internet and also the foreign policy of America as a whole (NSA, 2014).

In order to categorize and quantity the costs associated with the surveillance programs of NSA. The research findings revealed that the actions have already been initiated. This will continue to cause a major damage to the United States interests and also the internet worldwide community. Generally, it has been observed that for these surveillance programs, the cost associated are; The Economic cost directly to the Businesses in the U.S; the Potential costs to the openness of the internet and to the Businesses of the U.S from the increase of localization of Dara and the Protection protocols; The foreign policy cost to the U.S and the Cybersecurity cost. In the costs impacting the economy directly, we can see that the conglomerates in the U.S have started declining the sales on foreign countries and have lost opportunities of new business. This is a specific case when the companies overseas turn the products; claim that can safeguard the users from the spying of NSA into the advantage competitively. The industry of cloud computing is also vulnerable particularly and this means the loss of billions of dollars in the coming five years because of the implementation of the surveillance program of NSA.  Other potential risk is the increase in the data protocol protection and its localization. There are proposals that are new from the government that are looked to localize the data requirement. A much robust protection law on the protection of data results in the compound losses of economy in the long run. These kind of proposals force the architecture changes to the worldwide network itself which threatens the privacy and the free expression. The other negative impact is the Foreign policy cost to the U.S. It means that the Internet freedom agenda of America is losing credibility and it damages the multilateral and the broader bilateral relations threating the foreign policy of America (NSA, 2014). The extent of the surveillance program of the NSA reveals that a number of interactions are critical with the nations like Brazil and Germany.  It also impacts on the cybersecurity as it damages the security of the internet. This is done by the weakening of the encryption key standards, backdoors insertion of the surveillance into the software and hardware, stockpiling instead of information disclosure regarding the vulnerability of the software security. In short, the overall worldwide security of the internet is undermined and disrupted because of the various operations of hacking (Liptak & Michael).

The government of America have taken some steps that mitigates the harm done and have started the hard process of trust rebuilding in America. Based on the findings of this research, it can be recommended that the government of America needs to take appropriate measure to address the issues which the programs of NSA are impacting on the foreign relations, cybersecurity and the economy of U.S. First of all, it needs to strengthen the protection of privacy for both the non-Americans and the Americans within the territory and outside the states as well (Liptak & Michael).  The government needs to create a surveillance program from both the corporations and the public. It must help reduce the vulnerabilities of security rather than gathering them. Thirdly, it must separate the defensive and offensive NSA functions to reduce the conflict of interest (NSA, 2014).

The targeting procedure of NSA should be revaluated in to define the expected intelligence of foreigners. It must determine the general condition set for the intelligence of foreign countries. On the other hand, a written description of the basis for which the sufficient determination is being targeted for each selector on the basis of foreign intelligence information must be approved by the FISA court. The National Security Agency needs to implement these targeting procedures that are revised (Jarvis). They are revised with the help of training analyst and guidance of them to specify the condition for the determination of the foreign intelligence. Also there must be a written detailed explanation that helps to cover it. Upon the NSA’s procedures of targeting, we can see the internal reviews of agencies as well as the audits of compliance which are performed by the DOJ and the ODNI (Liptak & Michael). These must include the compliance assessment with the purpose of the foreign intelligence requirement. In contrast to the review presently conducted of the compliance with the regulatory requirement that targets are believed reasonably to be the non-U.S persons that are outside the terrorist of the United States (NSA, 2014).

Another recommendation is to minimize the procedures of FBI and these needs to be reflected more clearly. This includes the actual practice for conducting queries of the U.S person along with the frequency with which the data of Section 702 may be found when making queries on a routine basis as a part of investigation and assessment of FBI. Additionally, an increased limit must be placed on the dissemination and the use of FBI’s data in relation with the criminal matters of non-foreign intelligence (Jarvis).  The agents and analysts of FBI who work only on the criminal matters of non-foreign intelligence are not allowed to have queries of the Section 702 data. However, they are allowed to conduct those queries that don’t pertain to the databases of Section 702. This kind of procedure is not expressed clearly in the minimization process of FBI so this kind of practice needs to be modified to make it a real practice. The Board thinks that it is crucial for the transparency and accountability the procedures of minimization give a clarified view of the operational processes (Liptak & Michael).

Third recommendation includes the enhanced clarity that will allow the FISA court to better allow assessing the constitutional and statutory compliance when the procedures of minimization are shown to the court for getting the approval with the next recertification application of the government. The CIA and the NSA processes should be allowed to collect the Section 702 data for the purposes of foreign intelligence only (Van Buren). This can be done by using the person in U.S as identifiers only if the issue is relating to the statement of facts that portray that the query is certain to give the information of foreign intelligence as described by FISA. In short, the CIA and NSA can develop written guidance for the analysts and agents as to which documentation and information is required to meet this standard.

Work Cited

United States. National Security Agency.  “NSA/CSS Mission, Vision, Values.” Washington: GPO, 2009.

Liptak, Adam and Michael S. Schmidt. “Judge Upholds N.S.A.’s Bulk Collection of Data on Calls.” The New York Times 28 December 2013, natl. ed.: A1.

 Jarvis, Jeff. “The primary NSA issue isn’t privacy, its authority.” The Guardian 30 December 2013.

United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Part 6 of the Civil Liberties and Privacy Oversight Board Report. Washington: GPO, 2014.

Van Buren, Peter. “10 Myths About NSA Surveillance That Need Debunking.” Mother Jones Jan. 2014.