In this scenario, government encroachment on privacy is the primary issue. The huge amount of phone and internet tracking did by the US government is seen as a small invasion of privacy that is worth it to protect the country from attack. The government says that the programs are “compromises” that are meant to keep Americans safe from terrorist threats while also protecting their privacy. In his defense, the president said that Congress and federal judges were in charge of the programs and that politicians knew about them (Chong, Xiong, & Proctor, 2019). In the U.S., however, this has led to a split in the media.
The Washington Post says that government investigators have gotten into the main servers of Apple, Google, and Facebook to get photos, emails, and other information that helps analysts track where a person goes and who they talk to. This made people even more worried about their privacy after a Guardian article said that the National Security Agency looked through the phone records of millions of Verizon Communications customers (Dimitrova & Brkan, 2018). So, after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the two studies sparked a global debate about privacy rights and how much the government should be able to watch people. Concerning President Obama’s reasoning, he promised to run the most open government in US history. In his first comments on the scandal, he said that he had entered office with “healthy scepticism” about the surveillance programs but that he had come to think that small invasions of privacy were okay.
The cause of conflict to stop this intrusion was to make sure programs don’t go too far by not having audits and tightening controls. The companies said that there is no link between being suspicious and being watched and that any invasion of privacy must be okay if a few terrorists are caught. They say those good intentions aren’t enough and that there is a need for protection against the government doing too much. Microsoft, for example, has said that it does not collect data for the government on purpose and only does so when it is asked for specific names or accounts. It was decided that the government’s program was very upsetting and went beyond what the law allowed. The federal government has collected a huge amount of information. It’s not true that it will protect national security.
If I were in charge of policy, I would only let people look into individual accounts where I thought something was wrong. I think the NSA should get more of its raw data for intelligence reports from PRISM. True, the NSA can monitor international internet traffic with the PRISM project, but it also collects American communications (Dimitrova & Brkan, 2018). In contrast, the once-secret Boundless Information program looks at Verizon calls and gets some of its information from them. The National Security Agency has spied on internet connections all over the world. Fiber optic connections send large amounts of data to connect continents to the internet. The NSA works with local intelligence agencies to tap these cables in some countries. In other countries, it does it on its own. So, even if the NSA has the ability to track every device on the planet, I think this ability should be limited to the organization itself. This protects the privacy of IT businesses and makes it easier for people to get along.
References
Dimitrova, A., & Brkan, M. (2018). Balancing National Security and Data Protection: The Role of EU and US Policy‐Makers and Courts before and after the NSA Affair. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(4), 751-767.
Chong, I., Xiong, A., & Proctor, R. W. (2019). Human factors in the privacy and security of the internet of things. Ergonomics in design, 27(3), 5-10.