Assessing Policy Solutions for Mass Surveillance Through “The NSA files” Leak

Introduction and Brief Overview

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former CIA contractor leaked documents that outlined how the NSA was running a large-scale global surveillance program called PRISM (“Edward”). Per Snowden’s whistleblowing, The Guardian and The Washington Post reported that the PRISM surveillance program collected extensive information from internet users around the world. In addition to the PRISM program, it was revealed that the NSA was receiving daily telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon through a secret court order (MacAskill, Ewen, et al.). The reporting added that the NSA had direct access to the internet servers of nine internet firms which include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo (“Edward”). After the publication of these reports, the former NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that NSA surveillance had aided in the prevention of 54 plots. The allegation was fact-checked by ProPublica and only 4 were to be found (MacAskill, Ewen, et al.).

The situation has snowballed into a big global debate on how states and governments were spying on their citizens and even in some cases, one another. Although more events can be linked and further elaborations can be made as to the situation, it is undeniable that the mass surveillance of any given populace is controversial for many. In times where everything around us from people to electronic devices are interconnected more than ever, common global values such as privacy are talked about more than ever. Thus, it is important to enact policies and social practices that aim to respect the privacy of individuals as much as possible, in a modern-day society that is riddled with security threats both on personal and national levels.

Evaluation of the Issue

Mass surveillance is an issue that lies in many broad spectrums of human existence from IT to philosophy. Rather than assessing the logistics of how these programs operate or the legality of such practices as a whole, the moral reasoning behind why such large-scale tasks shouldn’t be undertaken must be evaluated in more detail. Before outlining the moral reasons as to why these programs should not have been -and in the future shouldn’t be- conducted, it is important to touch upon some of the points that were raised as to why such programs are necessary in the first place.

In the case of the NSA, they chiefly argued that the program was created because it was used to detect possible threats to national security and eliminate them as soon as possible. However, as mentioned earlier, no direct link was found between the vast surveillance that was conducted and the threats that were curbed (MacAskill, Ewen, et al.). Or, that is the extent of what we have been told…

Although these programs are operated with a more utilitarian approach in mind, when these programs are evaluated from a deontological standpoint, it is not hard to say that not only are these programs severely unethical, but they also weaken the trust of the populace that they aim to serve and protect. Under the deontological framework, privacy is a global value that should be respected and upheld universally. Unfortunately, these programs not only disregard such principles but also create a literal “Big Brother” ecosystem where people are constantly monitored whether they know it or not.

Possible Solutions to Issues Created as a Result of Mass Surveillance

Some provisions have been either lightened or revised in the following years to appease the general public to some extent for the NSA in particular. However, when it comes to the general sense of what the global community has done in regards to mass surveillance in general, it is hard to say there are any tangible solutions.

These are some possible solutions that aim to address the issue of mass surveillance, concerning governments, private companies, and citizens in general:

1. Instead of following a “bring in all of the haystack to find the needle” approach, governments should consider more passive surveillance such as targeted surveillance as they have done before;

2. Laws and regulations should be enacted that ensure the dealings of governments regarding secrecy are maintained, whilst they don’t overreach when it comes to intelligence gathering;

3. Private companies whose user data is being accessed/gathered should be more transparent when it comes to how much data they collect and is transferred over in return;

4. Everyone should educate themselves as much as possible about the possible methods that their private data might be collected without their knowledge

Although these possible solutions to the problem of mass surveillance target different subgroups of society, they have the same aim: To ensure that the privacy rights of individuals are respected whilst their and their nations’ national interests are protected to the utmost extent.

Conclusion

It is always important to remember that the issue of mass surveillance is an issue that transcends borders and countries. An issue that affects everyone who takes part in modern means of communication.

In the end, we as a society should strive to maintain a coexistence where we have the right to choose those who we want to know as much as we want them to know. The only way we can do this is by both holding each other accountable and by educating ourselves as individuals.

Works Cited

“Edward Snowden: Leaks That Exposed US Spy Programme.” BBC News, BBC, 17 Jan. 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964.

MacAskill, Ewen, et al. “NSA Files Decoded: Edward Snowden’s Surveillance Revelations Explained.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 1 Nov. 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1.

“NSA’s PRISM Surveillance Program: How It Works and What It Can Do.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 June 2013, www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google.

Robertson, Adi. “Senate Passes Surveillance Bill without Ban on Web History Snooping.” The Verge, The Verge, 14 May 2020, www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21257782/surveillance-bill-congress-senate-pass-usa-freedom-reauthorization-act.

Sottek, T.C., and Janus Kopfstein. “Everything You Need to Know about Prism.” The Verge, 17 July 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/7/17/4517480/nsa-spying-prism-surveillance-cheat-sheet.