Government spying on Citizens free essay sample

Even now – after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers – spying apologists say that the reports are â€Å"exaggerated† or â€Å"overblown†, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys. In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications. For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail. The government is spying on you through your phone †¦ and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off. As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into Android’s operating system †¦ bugging three-quarters of the world’s smartphones. Google – or the NSA – can remotely turn on your phone’s camera and recorder at any time. Moreover, Google knows just about every WiFi password in the world †¦ and so the NSA does as well, since it spies so widely on Google. But it’s not just the Android. We will write a custom essay sample on Government spying on Citizens or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In reality, the NSA can spy on just about everyone’s smart phone. Cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and ATT, responded to at least 1. 3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way. ) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: â€Å"That’s No Phone. That’s My Trackerâ€Å"). Remember, that might be happening even when your phone is turned off. The government might be spying on you through your computer’s webcam or microphone. The government might also be spying on you through the â€Å"smart meter† on your own home. NSA also sometimes uses â€Å"man-in-the-middle† tactics, to pretend that it is Google or other popular websites to grab your information. The FBI wants a backdoor to all software. But leading European computer publication Heise said in 1999 that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software. Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and FBI so that encryption doesn’t block the government’s ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and other Microsoft services. And Microsoft informs intelligence agencies of with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, so that information can be used by the government to access computers. The most under-discussed aspect of the NSA story has long been its international scope. That all changed this week as both Germany and France exploded with anger over new revelations about pervasive NSAsurveillance on their population and democratically elected leaders. As was true for Brazil previously, reports about surveillance aimed at leaders are receiving most of the media attention, but what really originally drove the story there were revelations that the NSA is bulk-spying on millions and millions of innocent citizens in all of those nations. The favorite cry of US government apologists -–everyone spies! – falls impotent in the face of this sort of ubiquitous, suspicionless spying that is the sole province of the US and its four English-speaking surveillance allies (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). There are three points worth making about these latest developments. †¢ First, note how leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with basic indifference when it was revealed months ago that the NSA was bulk-spying on all German citizens, but suddenly found her indignation only when it turned out that she personally was also targeted. That reaction gives potent insight into the true mindset of many western leaders. †¢ Second, all of these governments keep saying how newsworthy these revelations are, how profound are the violations they expose, how happy they are to learn of all this, how devoted they are to reform. If thats true, why are they allowing the person who enabled all these disclosures –Edward Snowden – to be targeted for persecution by the US government for the crime of blowing the whistle on all of this? If the German and French governments – and the German and French people – are so pleased to learn of how their privacy is being systematically assaulted by a foreign power over which they exert no influence, shouldnt they be offering asylum to the person who exposed it all, rather than ignoring or rejecting his pleas to have his basic political rights protected, and thus leaving him vulnerable to being imprisoned for decades by the US government? Aside from the treaty obligations these nations have to protect the basic political rights of human beings from persecution, how can they simultaneously express outrage over these exposed invasions while turning their back on the person who risked his liberty and even life to bring them to light? †¢ Third, is there any doubt at all that the US government repeatedly tried to mislead the world when insisting that this system of suspicionless surveillance was motivated by an attempt to protect Americans from The Terroristsâ„ ¢? Our reporting has revealed spying on conferences designed to negotiate economic agreements, the Organization of American States, oil companies, ministries that oversee mines and energy resources, the democratically elected leaders of allied states, and entire populations in those states. Can even President Obama and his most devoted loyalists continue to maintain, with a straight face, that this is all about Terrorism? That is what this superb new Foreign Affairs essay by Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore means when it argues that the Manning and Snowden leaks are putting an end to the ability of the US to use hypocrisy as a key weapon in its soft power. Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant panic – the NSAs director, General Keith Alexander, actually demanded Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world on this secret surveillance system be halted (Techdirt has the full video here): The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith Alexander, is accusing journalists of selling his agencys documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor Edward Snowden. I think its wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesnt make sense, Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Departments Armed With Science blog. We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I dont know how to do that. Thats more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, its wrong to allow this to go on, the NSA director declared. [My italics] There are 25,000 employees of the NSA (and many tens of thousands more who work for private contracts assigned to the agency). Maybe one of them can tell The General about this thing called the first amendment. Id love to know what ways, specifically, General Alexander has in mind for empowering the US government to come up with a way of stopping the journalism on this story. Whatever ways those might be, they are deeply hostile to the US constitution – obviously. What kind of person wants the government to forcibly shut down reporting by the press? Whatever kind of person that is, he is not someone to be trusted in instituting and developing a massive bulk-spying system that operates in the dark. For that matter, nobody is. The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong, he said. Snowden will go down in history as one of Americas most consequential whistle-blowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the worlds most secretive organisations – the NSA. In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, but I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant. Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. I dont want public attention because I dont want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing. He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me. Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in. He added: My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. He has had a very comfortable life that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. Im willing to sacrifice all of that because I cant in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine theyre secretly building. Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last weeks series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose. He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for a couple of weeks in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year. As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world. On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent, and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government. In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. Ive left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay, he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills. He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them. Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him. Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington. And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks. All my options are bad, he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory. Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets, he said. We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. I am not afraid, he said calmly, because this is the choice Ive made. He predicts the government will launch an investigation and say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become. The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I wont be able to help any more. Thats what keeps me up at night, he said, his eyes welling up with tears. Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED. ) In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression. He recounted how his beliefs about the wars purpose were quickly dispelled. Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone, he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged. After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agencys covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma. By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents. That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw. He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment. Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world, he says. I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good. He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons. First, he said: Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didnt feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone. Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary. He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in, and as a result, I got hardened. The primary lesson from this experience was that you cant wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act. Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSAs surveillance activities were, claiming they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them. He described how he once viewed the internet as the most important invention in all of human history. As an adolescent, he spent days at a time speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own. But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. I dont see myself as a hero, he said, because what Im doing is self-interested: I dont want to live in a world where theres no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity. Once he reached the conclusion that the NSAs surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. What theyre doing poses an existential threat to democracy, he said.