The Importance Of NSA Spying

When I first read this article something that struck my mind as interesting was the first reported case of NSA spying. Edward Snowden worked for the NSA and became a whistleblower when found out how invasive the NSA become. He took classified information from the NSA and how they were misleading congress. He contacted Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras to get the story out. According to Snowden the NSA had direct access to “Google, Microsoft, Facebook, even Steve Jobs's Apple.” (Harding). The NSA had information on everyone without their consent. This was the biggest issue, the NSA was breaking the fourth amendment law of its citizens. It could be justified if the NSA was used to spy and gather huge chunks of metadata from other nations for
With the increased media coverage of the NSA’s dirty business more people are talking about the NSA. Some people while talking on the phone will jokingly acknowledge the Government in their conversation. Most Americans joke about the topic and continue to post their personal life onto the web. Most people honestly do not care enough that the government is breaching their right to privacy. They already have their entire life posted onto social media, so they do not care about also giving away other private information. The government with the combination of personal records, street address, income, etc., and the information the NSA is collecting is able to know everything about someone’s
While some people are up in arms and protesting the NSA, most people are just giving them more information. If NSA whistleblowers did not come out we would never know about any of this. Snowden stole files from the NSA and collaborated with reporters and put together a story. He did it all in secrecy and after releasing everything he vanished. He risked his life in order to expose the government’s illegal ways. People know about the NSA and many suits have been filled against them, but there still is not a national uproar about the topic. More and more stories are being written on the topic, but not enough people care yet. In my opinion I always viewed the NSA as a joke and kept posting everything without a care in the world. The Government knows my whole life story. My eyes were opened up once I read the article about snowden, How Edward Snowden went from loyal NSA contractor to whistleblower by Luke Harding, and what he did to expose the NSA. After reading this article my interest in the topic grew more. I never knew about project XKEYSCORE and how it effective it is. The government is not listening to people phones calls, but they do know other information. “They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour. But they don't know what was discussed.” (Ophsal). The government can see who you called and how long the