Category: Group 3

When I first started reading the article, my knowledge of the Snowden leak was very limited. I knew he had taken classified documents and made them available to the public so that the public would be aware of privacy violations; however, anything beyond that I had not given a great deal of thought. After reading and listening through the article, I was still left with a sense of “Does it really matter?” All the article did was present to the reader that their privacy was being violated and that it was not a good thing; I never got any insight as to why violating a person’s data privacy was a bad thing, instead, the idea that it was bad was forced repetitively down my throat. So I spent some time in introspection and browsing through different articles online and I developed a very basic and short list of reasons why it was a bad thing (beyond the idea of it violating the Constitution).

1. I found a TED Talk that was given by the journalist, Glenn Greenwald, with whom Snowden confided his story. In it, he gives his argument to the people who argue “We don’t actually need privacy if we are not acting like criminals.” His response is to give them one of his email addresses and asks them to send him the addresses and passwords for all of their email accounts. He has never received one.
2. It leads the American public to believe that America is not as Democratic (yes I do know that we are more of a Republic than a democracy) as was once thought.
3. Snowden only took some of the classified documents…there are many other secrets that are undoubtedly as bad if not worse than the documents he lifted.

My opinion on the matter is much more complex than this blog post (and my list of reasons) allows, but hopefully by pointing out that the article only tells us that the leaks are bad, and not the potential implications of the leaks, you develop an opinion that goes beyond the surface.

Greenwald’s TED Talk:

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government had never been so exposed in failing to protect the country. The NSA, namely, admitted that they had failed in their intelligence gathering abilities and it was evident that surveillance needed to change in order to prevent another terrorist event from happen again. In the article published by “The Guardian,” the authors claim that the strong increase in surveillance can be credited to the 9/11 attacks and the major increase in cell phone and internet usage the past 10 years.

Enter Edward Snowden in 2013, who exposed the “unethical” actions of the NSA by releasing classified government information to the public. Amongst the documents that Snowden released, the US government was exposed for spying on its citizens using unethical methods, such as partnering with large communication companies and hacking online encryption codes meant to protect US citizens. Snowden rationale was that, “harming people isn’t my goal. Transparency is.”

So where does the finger pointing begin? As a government employee, Snowden was certainly exposed to classified information that, like much government information, was not meant to be seen by the public. So by releasing said information, he violated the obligation to his government and his nation. However, Snowden also exposed the NSA for, what he believed to be, questionable surveillance activity and gave attention to the questions: How much does the NSA know about our lives and have they taken domestic surveillance too far since 9/11?

The reason why I would favor the latter part of the previous argument is because of what the government could “hold over our heads” based on information they have collected. In the interview with Ladar Levison, Levison states that “a lot of people have nothing to hide” but “by collecting all of this information and making it only accessible to a small group of people, we are creating a world that is that close to becoming a totalitarian state.”

Nonetheless, Edward Snowden has created a near revolution that merge together elements of civil liberties, national security, and government surveillance power. Perhaps Snowden’s wrongdoing has sparked a change in the way we think about government surveillance that otherwise may have not come about for another couple of years.

Edward Snowden leaking the NSA surveillance information has clearly caused both a media and social uproar. At this point in time, when American citizens perception of the government is very poor due to extreme partisanship and a recent government shutdown, this scandal only enhanced the publics lack of trust in the United States Government.

However, even though there clearly are multiple  opinions on the the constitutionality and morality of the NSA surveillance, this situation does differ from other similar situations. One relational situation is the IRS targeting scandal. Both of these situations involve the government taking surveillance of persons without them being away of this fact. Both of these situations also raise the questions of if the government is over-reaching its bounds and infringing upon privacy rights by partaking in such actions. However, the clear difference in these situations are that with the IRS, it was a matter of targeting a group of people based on political beliefs. With the NSA, it does not appear that their is any targeting that is not permitted within the “three hops” rule. Although this does allow for a vast amount of people to have surveillance taken upon them, it is still thought that their is probable cause for such surveillance to occur.

Even though the reported number of incidents prevented due to NSA the surveillance went from 54 to 1, it raises the obvious question, is one enough? Although it may be very unnerving to think of how much the NSA knows about you, if this information truly did prevent American lives from being lost, isn’t it worth it? Due to Snowden’s leakage, this debate has begun and will continue for many years, especially given the current political climate.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/nsa-auge.jpg

In an era of fiber optic cables, enabling data to travel up to speeds of 2/3rds the speed of light, and the continuous flow of information across the web puts mass amount of data right at the fingertips of the NSA. As we have already talked about, anonymity is practically impossible when attempting to live a convenient life. However, it wasn’t until 2013 with the release of the Snowden files did we realize that not only were we not anonymous, but in fact we were actually quite well known.

Using handy counter on The Guardian website and a stop watch, I calculated that the NSA collects, according to The Guardian, around 20 terrabytes of information per minute. Most of this data would be turned around and stored in the NSA’s new Utah Data Center which, according to Fox News, cost the taxpayers $1.7 billion to build. Forbes.com estimated that this site could hold up to 12 exabytes of information. To put that in perspective lets do a calculation:

1 exabyte= 1,000,000 terabytes

12 exabytes= 12,000,000 terabytes

@ 20 terabytes per minute (12,000,000/20)

The NSA could hold 600,000 minutes of data

600,000 @ 60 minutes per hour (600,000/60)

The NSA could hold 10,000 hours of data

10,000 hours @ 24 hours per day (10,000/24)

The NSA could hold over 416 days worth of data

The NSA could hold all the data they collect, which using the talked about dragnet and the “three hops” would be most of the data available, for over 416 days. After they filter through the data to determine threat levels of information and remove the information deemed non-threatening, they would have enough space to hold enough data on all terrorist SUSPECTS AND THEIR FIRST TWO HOPS OF FRIENDS for far greater than any of them will actually live. At a time where cyber attacks are a real threat to not only nation security, but also things like economic attacks, identity theft, and anti-western hacking groups, can we trust the government with out data? What right does the government have to bully corporations without warrants like Lavabit to give over users data? These are both questions that need to be answered and are finally being talked about thanks to Edward Snowden.

More information can be found here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought/

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/13/what-we3-know-utah-nsa-mega-data-warehouse/