American Studies Blog 11

Critical opinion of National Security Surveillance

Critics of Government surveillance aren’t backing off despite recent developments Article 

The article I have chosen to analyse is by an American on the issue of National Security Surveillance. Walter Pincus reported the critique in The Washington Post, back in February 2014. He has numerous works published, suggesting he is a well-respected reporter. The issue of privacy is one that is globally questioned. The article focuses on Edward Snowden, an American computer professional who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA).  He was a former system administrator for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a counterintelligence trainer for the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). Pincus’ portrayal of this account is fairly neutral. Although his statistics imply that this is a bad thing that is on going, he doesn’t allow his opinion to come across irrationally and is composed.

Pincus begins his report with a powerful statistic, which suggests that only recently has information been slightly harder to reach is due to the “drop in use of land lines and NSA’s inability to collect metadata on the cell phone or Internet calls.” The reporter rights about other developments in which have occurred like Edward Snowden. Typing the question into Google of “How much privacy do we have?” There are 877,000,000 results available. This has implications that there is a worrying amount of people who are questioning their privacy.  It also shows that this isn’t just affecting people in America but globally also.

In the interview, regarding data that the NSA collects, Snowden said: “Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an e-mail, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cellphone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of any crime.”

Interestingly looking at this quote, it makes you realize how much privacy we do not have. Even in the everyday world phone hacking is constantly going on around us, people are downloading movies and music off the internet and unfortunately in this day and age it can be seen to be the normal. Looking at celebrities who have their privacy intervened with every day – some can’t even go food shopping without having their picture taken.

What we know now after this article was written is that Edward Snowden was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of Government property on June 14^th and eight days later had his passport revoked.