Essay --

Drew Rivera English 4 Ms. R. Crow December 11th, 2013 NSA spying, what is it and how can we stop it? The National Security Agency was created in 1952 through a top secret memorandum signed by President Truman. At the time of its creation, the NSA was secretive, with only a few members of Congress knowing about it. Existence of the agency had been a deep secret until it was unveiled in a Senate investigation called the â€Å"Church Committee† in 1975 (2nd Source Title: Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying). The Committee uncovered illegal domestic spying by the NSA, and recommended it make reforms, this was one of the earliest incidents / scandals for the NSA. Prior to that, in 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that warrants are required and that the NSA are to provide the names of all US citizens and residents it wished to monitor. After 9/11, President Bush ordered the NSA to eavesdrop without court approved warrants technically breaking breaking previously set â€Å"rules† on domestic spying. Leaked reports from whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, claims the NSA reviews millions of phone records collected by Verizon (source title: NSA said to be spying on millions of Verizon users.), does this sound legal to you? The NSA collects and keeps record of calls made in the U.S., this includes the phone number of the telephone that is receiving and making the call, and the duration of the call. This is known as â€Å"metadata† it doesn’t include a recording of the call. This information was discovered through a leaked secret court order, that states Verizon is to turn over all information meeting this criteria every day. Phone Companies including AT&T and Sprint, are also said to be giving up records to the NSA on a daily basis. All of... ...vering information about the programs. In that sense, the supposed â€Å"Congressional oversight† seems more like an illusion of accountability. The NSA claims its mission for domestic spying is â€Å"simple† that they are here to : collect, process, and store U.S. citizen data for the good of our nation. They NSA further elaborates that they cope with the overload of information we have in our country and use it to their strategic advantage. This in turn, helps them find new ways to detect, report, and respond to all domestic threats. â€Å"We work through you. For you. For our Nation.†(Source:http://nsa.gov1.info), this means they are trying to justify that spying on civilians is being done for the good of our nation. Though they claim this is for the sake of our nation, does this violate any previously set laws that are in the constitution or amendments in the Bill Of Rights?