U.S. Domestic Policies (1945-1980) Unit VIIB AP U.S. History.
U.S. Government Domestic Surveillance
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Transcript of U.S. Government Domestic Surveillance
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You Have the Right to Maintain Privacy: How the U.S. Government’s Development and Advancement of Unwarranted Domestic
Spying Programs on Millions of Innocent Americans is Illegal and Unconstitutional !!!!A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Science !
By !DeAndre Joseph Horton !!!!!!!!
In partial fulfillment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science !May 2014
Introduction The purpose of this research paper is to expose the reader to elements of national security
that are meant to protect the nation, but have been doubled into domestic spying tools employed by
the U.S. government. My thesis serves to inform the reader on how the US government’s domestic
surveillance undermines the fundamental principles upon which a liberal democracy is built upon.
It encourages free thought while fostering an informed population of scholars in the domestic and
international realms of politics.
Beginning with an empirical account of the one event that issued in this era of electronic
surveillance as a means of counter-terrorism—the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11
September 2001—I establish the real-world context that led to the formation of the Department of
Homeland Security, as well as the development and implementation of various sophisticated and
powerful means of surveillance in the 21st century. I expose the reader to a historical timeline of
the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program, graphs on the calculations on modern
terrorism trends, polls on how Americans view their right to privacy compared to the state’s interest
in investigating possible terrorist threats, and a chart illustrating how the NSA uses it’s programs to
clone and split copies of electronic communications for its own record and analysis purposes.
My research not only dives into the purpose and goals for the National Security Agency and
Department of Homeland Security—the two major government entities that I argue infringe most
upon the constitutional rights of citizens—but it also gives an account into various lawsuits filed
against these organizations mainly on principles regarding the Freedom of Information Act, so as to
demand more transparency among government institutions. For example, the case of Jewel v. NSA
where millions of American citizens unknowingly and unwarrantly had all means of conversation—
telephone calls, text messages, instant messages, emails, and various other electronic
communications methods—were recorded and stored by the NSA via huge telecommunications
companies such as AT&T and Verizon. I then dive into an analysis of terrorism post-9/11 to analyze
!1
its evolution through today and, more importantly, how the population has and continues to
perceive it as a threat. I also introduce the case of Wilner v. NSA where 23 American attorneys
were subject to unwarranted surveillance solely for representing individuals detained at
Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
In my analysis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I use the cases of the EFF v.
the DHS, where the DHS and Department of Transportation (DOT) employed very sophisticated
Predator drones to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies without exposing certifications
and authorizations explaining the use of such drones domestically. I then introduce the natural born
right of every human being to that of privacy, which further establishes the definition upon which
my central theme rests—to preserve the American people’s right to privacy through the dismantling
of domestic spying programs. Furthermore, I shed light into the most recent and developing case of
illegal and unconstitutional domestic surveillance practices in regards to the CIA being accused of
spying on Senate computers, offering this case scenario as possibly the most realistic chance we as
a nation have of tearing down these repressive tools and harmful policies used to undermine the
liberal democracy of the state, as well as the rights of every natural born U.S.-citizen today.
Finally, I end with a normative approach to how the American people should discourage the
development of such domestic surveillance programs to preserve their fundamental rights outlined
in the Constitution of the liberal democratic republic of the USA. I describe how today’s liberal
democracy runs and operates in light of all counter-terrorism policies, practices, and infrastructures,
offering the threats that they pose to the continuing and legitimacy of the United States democratic
structure of government.
!Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 At 8:45 on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Boeing 767 crashed into the north tower
of the World Trade Center in New York City. Only 18 minutes later, a second Boeing 767 appeared
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in the sky, sharply turning toward and smashing into the World Trade Center’s south tower. By
10:30 that morning, both towers had crumbled to the ground, engulfing all of lower Manhattan in a
thick black smoke and filling the surrounding 5 blocks in burning debris. The attack would go on to
take the lives of close to 3,000 New Yorkers, including emergency response officers, and injure
almost 100,000 more civilians. That day, September 11, 2001, would immediately issue in a new
world era of counterterrorism that would grow to influence American policy so much that it would
raise question to the integrity of the liberal democratic republic of the United States of America that
the Constitution stands to protect (history.com 2010).
The attacks on September 11th had direct and indirect implications on U.S. governmental
structures. In the weeks after 9/11, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security
Agency (NSA) to conduct a range of surveillance activities inside the United States, which had
been barred by law and agency policy for decades. In 2005, the New York Times exposed the NSA’s
spying program for the very first time. In response, President Bush admitted to a small aspect of
the program in which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between
500-1,000 people inside the U.S. with suspected connections to Al Qaeda. Other aspects of the
program, however, were not aimed at targeted individuals suspected of terrorism, but perhaps
millions of innocent U.S. citizens who were never suspected of any crime (Risen and Lichtblau
2005).
!The National Security Agency According to their official website, the National Security Agency was established by
President Truman in 1954 with the purpose of collecting, processing, and disseminating intelligence
information from foreign electronic signals for national foreign intelligence and counterintelligence
purposes, and to support military operations. From its inception to the turn of the millennium, the
NSA only had one documented incident of illegal domestic spying, which was resolved with the
!3
establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). From the New York Times, "The
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was enacted in 1978, passed in response to
revelations by the Church Committee showing widespread abuse of government wiretaps, and to
growing concerns on the part of the Supreme Court over eavesdropping practices. The law governs
the surveillance of people in the United States for the purpose of collecting intelligence related to
foreign powers. A secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was created to
hear requests for such warrants. Safeguards were put in place to ensure that investigators pursuing
criminal matters did not obtain warrants under FISA that they could not get from an ordinary
judge.”
All of this changed immediately following the 9/11 attacks. The culture of domestic spying
began to shift at the NSA, with its post-9/11 approach being one that circumvented all federal
statutes and the Constitution as long as there was some visceral connection for looking for
terrorists. In the three years alone following Bush’s authorization of the NSA’s implementation of
domestic spying as a measure of counterterrorism, the intelligence agency monitored the
international telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, if not thousands, of people inside the
United States without warrants, justifying this by claiming that the agency still sought warrants for
obtaining records of completely domestic communications. As Timeline 1.0 shows, this claim
would be refuted by various accounts of warrantless domestic spying that would only be more fully
exposed later in 2009 via a leaked NSA inspector general report. Furthermore, the table gives an in
depth look into the activities of the NSA and their Domestic Spying Program from it’s inception to
today.
The leading organization in this fight to demolish all domestic spying programs, especially
employed by the NSA is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As stated on the EFF website,
they are a donor-funded U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that champions user privacy, free
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expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and
technology development. Since they were established, in 1990, they have used the unique expertise
Timeline 1.0—Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying !*Source: Data collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
* https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline !
!5
06/05/2013—Secret Court Order Revealing Spying of All
U.S. Verizon Calls Leaked
06/06/2013—PRISM Program Revealed: NSA Tapping Into Internet Companies' Systems,
Mass Collecting User Data
06/11/2013—ACLU Files New Lawsuit Against
NSA Spying
06/09/2013—NSA’s Boundless Informat Tool to Record and Analyze
Spying Revealed by Edward Snowden
06/27/2013—The Guardian Releases Draft NSA Inspector
General Report Detailing Complete History of Domestic
NSA Spying
07/11/2013—Guardian Reports on Microsoft's Cooperation
with U.S. GovernmentXKEYSCORE Revealed
08/09/2013—Guardian Reveals Legal Loophole NSA Uses to Spy on Americans
08/05/2013—Reuters Reports on DEA's Use of Data Collected by NSA
08/07/2013—Reuters Follow up: IRS also
Uses Data DEA Receives from NSA
08/15/2013—Washington Post
Reveals NSA Internal Audit
Showing Thousands of
Violations
09/01/2013—New York Times Reveals AT&T Calling Records Database Used
by DEA Goes Back 20 Years
08/21/2013—Office of the Director of
National Intelligence Releases FISA Court Decision Detailing NSA's Violation of
the Fourth Amendment
09/05/2013—Guardian Reveals How NSA and GCHQ Attack Encryption
Standards and Hack
09/30/2013—Guardian Reveals NSA Stores
Metadata of Millions of Web Users for up to a Year
10/02/2013—New York Times Reveals NSA Tracked Cell-
Phone Location of Americans for up to Two Years
10/11/2013—FISA Court Renews
Order Collecting All Americans' Calling Records
11/14/2013—News Reports Reveal CIA
Collecting Bulk International Money
Transfers Using Patriot Act
11/21/2013—Senate Judiciary Committee Holds
Hearing on NSA Spying
12/04/2013—Washington Post Reveals NSA Collecting 5 Billion Records of Mobile
Phone Location Daily
12/10/2013—Washington Post Reveals How NSA
Turns Browser Cookies Into Surveillance Devices
01/03/2014—FISA Court Renews Order Collecting All Americans' Calling
Records
01/16/2014—Guardian Reveals NSA Collects Millions
of Text Messages
01/27/2014—NSA Spies on Users by Obtaining Information
from "Leaky" Mobile Apps
NBC Reveals GCHQ Tapped Into Fiberoptic Cable to Spy on Youtube Users
02/06/2014—FISA Court Modifies Section 215
Program After President Obama's Request
03/17/2014—Former Church Committee
Members and Staffers Call for a New Congressional
Investigation into Intelligence Collection
03/18/2014—The Washington Post Reveals the NSA's MYSTIC
program
03/27/2014—President Obama Releases an
Official Statement on Section 215 Bulk
Metadata Collection
03/28/2014—Director of National Intelligence Clapper Confirms NSA Conducted Warrantless Searches of
Information Collected Under Section 702
04/02/2014— Admiral Michael S. Rogers Assumes Role of Director of
NSA
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1954—President Truman establishes the NSA
1973—Supreme Court rules warrants are required for
domestic intelligence
1975—Senate “Church Committee” investigation uncovers illegal domestic
spying by NSA
1978— FISA signed into law, protecting Americans
from domestic spying
2001—Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200109/12/2001—Culture against
domestic spying shifts at the NSA
10/04/2001—President Bush signs order beginning NSA’s
Domestic Spying Program (DSP)
Mid-Oct 2001—NSA begins secretly approaching
Telecom companies to participate in the DSP
Late Oct 2001—Companies Start Sending Internet and Telephony
Content to NSA
Summer 2002—AT&T Technician Discovers NSA Is Working Inside AT&T
Facilities
Late 2002—Telecommunications Companies Formally Enter
Voluntarily Agreements with U.S. to Give Data to NSA
01/01/2003—Narus Surveillance Equipment Installed in Secret Room in AT&T’s San Francisco Facility
07/17/2003—Sen. Rockefeller Writes to VP Cheney Questioning
Legality of Program. Cheney Does Not Respond
09/25/2003—Congress Cancels "Total Info
Awareness" Surveillance Program Due to Privacy
Concerns
Late Sept—Parts of the Cancelled "Total Information Awareness" Program Quietly Moved into DSP
Late 2003—Selected FBI and CIA Employees Join
NSA Team
Early March 2004—Concerns Grow Over the Program in the
Justice Department
03/11/2004—White House Approves 45-Day Extension
of NSA Spying Without Justice Department Approval
03/19/2004—First Day of Three Month Period When NSA Stops Collecting Bulk
Internet Metadata
07/14/2004—Secret Surveillance Court, Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, Signs First Order to Resume Collection of Bulk
Internet Metadata
21/16/2005—New York Times Exposes NSA Spying to the Public for the First Time
12/17/2005—President Bush Confirms Existence
of NSA Spying
12/23/2005—New York Times Reveals NSA Spying Program is Much Larger Than President Bush Acknowledged and that Companies Gave Backdoor
Access to Their Domestic and International Communications
Stream
01/17/2006—New York Times Reports NSA Program Leads FBI to
Hundreds of Dead-Ends and Innocent Americans
01/20/2006—AT&T Whistleblower Mark Klein Goes to EFF With Evidence of AT&T's Involvement in NSA Spying
02/05/2006—USA Today Names the
Telecom Companies, Including AT&T, MCI
and Sprint, Which Helped in NSA DSP
05/11/2006—NSA Collecting All
Americans' Phone Calls for Database
May 2006—Phone Companies' Voluntary Agreement to Hand Over
"Bulk Metadata" to Government Ends
01/17/2007—FISA Court Rules It Will Now Oversee Certain Aspects of Program
08/03/2007—Protect America Act Passed by
House and Senate, Expands President's
Wiretapping Abilities08/05/2007—Protect America
Act Signed Into Law
07/09/2008—Congress Passes FISA Amendments Act, Giving Telecom Companies Immunity and Expanding Wiretapping
07/11/2008—ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging
Constitutionality of FISA Amendments Act
01/20/2009—President Obama Takes Office
03/02/2009—FISA Court Forces NSA to Obtain Court
Approval for Every Metadata Search
01/06/2011—NSA Starts Construction on Massive Data
Center to Hold the World's Intercepted Communications
10/11/2011—NSA Stops Internet Metadata Collection,
Continues Collection of Internet Content
04/15/2012—New York Times Reports NSA Still
Collecting Purely Domestic Communications
07/20/2012—Government Admits NSA Spying Violated Constitution
of leading technologists, activists, and attorneys in efforts to defend free speech online, fight illegal
surveillance, advocate for users and innovators, and support freedom-enhancing technologies, filing
more than 250 legal cases in defense of these Constitutional rights that advanced technology has
and will continue to infringe upon more and more each day. Most notably, they sued the NSA and
other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers in Jewel v. NSA.
!Jewel v. NSA Filed on 18 September 2008, Jewel v. NSA aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance
of millions of ordinary Americans while holding accountable the government officials who illegally
authorized it (EFF.org). The case was filed on behalf of Carolyn Jewel and several other AT&T
customers who claimed their constitutional rights were violated by the U.S. government via the
NSA’s unauthorized surveillance of their telephone and internet activity. The plaintiffs (represented
by public interest and the private counsel of the EFF) allege that this was a joint effort by major
telecommunications companies, outside of the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) and without authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
According to the case summary provided by the United States Courts website, they also allege that
the defendants have unlawfully solicited and obtained from telecommunications companies the
private telephone and internet transactional records of those companies’ customers, indicating who
the customers communicated with, when they communicated, and for how long the conversations
lasted, among other sensitive information. Using their nationwide network of sophisticated
communications surveillance devices that carry the telephone and internet communications of
millions of Americans not suspected of any crimes, the defendants continue to acquire the content
of a significant percentage of phone calls, emails, text messages, instant messages, web
communications, and other communications, both domestically and internationally, of practically
every American who uses the internet and/or phone system today.
!7
The government sought to block the suit outright, arguing that the information needed to
litigate the plaintiffs’ claim was protected under the states secret privilege evidentiary rule that
protects sensitive information obtained by the state in the interest of national security—despite the
fact that Congress already created secure procedures for courts to review sensitive evidence in suits
alleging unlawful domestic surveillance (ie. in-camera reviews). In January 2010, Judge Jeffrey S.
White initially dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim because without the evidence needed to make this
claim, there was no legal standing to proceed in court. On appeal, the Ninth Court of Appeals
reversed the district court’s dismissal on legal standing ground, finding that the plaintiffs did have
standing, and remanded “with instructions to consider, among other claims and defenses, whether
the government's assertion that the state secrets privilege bars this litigation” (Jewel v. NSA). On 8
July 2013, the District Court granted the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary adjudication—on
the basis that the defendants could not dispute the material facts of the case—and rejected the
defendants’ state secret defense. However, the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s
statutory claims on the basis of sovereign immunity—a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or
state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution—was also
granted by the District Court. As of 19 November 2013, the plaintiffs’ First and Fourth amendment
claim remain pending.
The plaintiffs claim that the defendants’ electronic surveillance program violated the First
Amendment, Fourth Amendment, separation of powers, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), the Wiretap Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or the Stored
Communications Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States of America dictates:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (U.S. Constitution). !
!8
Aside from the program’s obvious infringement on one’s freedom of speech, it also violates one’s
freedom to peaceably assemble. Freedom of assembly is the freedom of association—the right of
any group of people to join together for a particular purpose, ranging from social to business, and
usually meant to be a continuing organization. The question that arises here is about what
constitutes a “joining together” of peoples. In the digital era of today, is it not rational to broaden a
definition of “joining together” to include digital representation as actual agents of our persons?
For example, when you engage in communications via a telephone call, instant message, text
message, or email, among various other forms of virtual communication, you are not physically
assembling with the person(s) you are communicating with, but the infrastructure which you use to
communicate acts solely on your behalf—you have control over what information is shared
from your end—thus qualifying that as an agent. When these telecommunication companies
implement new technologies to create digital clones of your conversations for their own record and
analysis (See Chart 1.0), especially without any just reason, that is a violation your First
Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America dictates:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (U.S. Constitution). !The argument here is blatantly obvious: warrantless domestic wiretaps and surveillance of millions
of innocent Americans without their knowledge is a clear violation of their Fourth Amendment
Constitutional right as a citizen of the USA. The rebuttal to this argument is that there is probable
cause on the grounds of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which is part of the President’s
Surveillance Program, which is conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism.
Founded in 1999, the New America Foundation is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan
!!9
Chart 1.0—Model of NSA’s Interception Centers !Source: The Domestic Surveillance Directorate at http://nsa.gov1.info/surveillance/
(19 April 2014).
public policy institute and think tank focusing on a wide range of issues, including national security
studies, technology, asset building, health, energy, education, and the economy. The organization is
based in Washington, D.C. and, according to their study on the NSA’s bulk surveillance program’s
execution of preventing terrorism, they conclude that a review of the government’s claims about the
role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping
the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading.
They go further into an analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda, or a like-minded terrorist
group, that have been charged with an act of terrorism in the USA since 9/11, stating that the
controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone
numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their
!10
content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in,
at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. So, how is it that the judicial system has allowed this domestic
spying program to continue for more than a decade when the only semi-justifiable claim they have
for it’s continuation has been proven to be ultimately ineffective in it’s purpose? Ultimately, it all
can be summarized as follows: the U.S. government has infringed upon the Fourth Amendment
rights of millions of innocent American citizens via unwarranted and unreasonable search and
seizure of their communication records through illegal domestic surveillance programs.
The staple of the liberal democracy of the United States of America is our three-branch
government structure which all carry separate and independent powers and responsibilities so as to
not conflict with one another. With this separation of power comes the system of checks and
balances—allowing for one branch to limit another so as to prevent any branch of government from
becoming supreme to the others. These checks allow for presidents to veto legislation or appoint
new judges, Congress to impeach the president or change law, and the judiciary to declare acts
unconstitutional. If the federal government has domestic-spying powers concentrated in the
executive branch, with little oversight, the President can easily make use of this infrastructure to
collect data on members of Congress, or any political enemy essentially, and use that information to
strong-arm politicians or further his own political agenda. Such power in the executive branch
seriously undermines this system of checks and balances that is a staple of the structure of our
government. With this concentrated power, our system of government could easily veer toward
what James Madison described as the definition of tyranny in The Federalist No. 47, “the
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands.” This mere
presence of power does not prove that it has actually been abused by the Obama or Bush
administrations, but given the secrecy surrounding such programs and intelligence communities, it
is fair to conclude that it is possible that if such an abuse of power did/does occur, outsiders would
likely never know. In fact, there is one account in which this temptation—that is the access to
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extensive power with very little risk of being exposed—has already proven to overpower our
nation’s leader, which, in this case, even led to the formation and passing of FISA. As history
would dictate, Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, used federal resources to spy on
political and activist groups; and as the saying goes, “history does have a way of repeating itself.”
The longer the general population of the United States does not stand up and collectively fight for
the disbanding of this infrastructure, the greater a threat this will continue to become to the
separation of powers within our government.
Despite the fact that there are legitimate legal arguments that prove the NSA’s domestic
surveillance program infringes upon Constitutional rights of millions of Americans, as well as poses
a major threat to the structure of U.S. government, along with the violation of various governmental
acts already signed into law, Jewel v. NSA is still being tried, some five plus years after it was
originally filed. What does this say about the way our government is run? Not only does it tell
Americans that their Constitutional rights are in fact privileges, not only does it display the grossly
unbalanced system of power and control in the government, but it also broadcasts to the world and
our nation that our government has no limitation of power because they can now hide any and all
immoralities behind “The War on Terror.”
!Post-9/11 Terrorism As stated earlier, it is widely known that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, along
with the digitalization of the world today, is the reason behind the development and implementation
of illegal domestic spying programs, especially by the NSA. In their New York Times article on
President Bush’s secret order to widen domestic monitoring, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau report
that officials said the Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can
move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States. Defenders
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of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks
inside the United States.
!Graph 1.0—Homegrown Terrorism Against the U.S.
Number of Attacks
!Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014). ! According to calculations based on data from the Research And Development (RAND)
Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, and shown in Graph 1.0, incidents of homegrown
terrorism—extremist violence perpetrated by U.S. citizens or legal U.S. residents, and linked to or
inspired by al-Qaeda’s brand of radical Sunni Islamism—have decreased in the aggregate since
9/11. Since the database only began collecting data on domestic terrorism in the USA beginning in
2001, Graph 1.0 only shows cases of homegrown terrorism from 2001 to their most recent report in
2009. During this time span, there were 93 accounts of homegrown terrorism. With the number of
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0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
33
13
18
7
12
1 0
3 4
Graph 2.0—Domestic and International Terrorism Against the U.S., 2001-2009: Fatalities and Injuries
!
!!
!!!!Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014). !attacks reaching its peak in 2001, the number steadily decreases to 0 in 2007, only increasing
slightly with no more than 4 attacks in 2008 and 2009.
Most terrorist attacks against the USA occur from outside of the state’s borders. In fact, as
Graph 2.0 shows, international terrorism caused far more American fatalities and injuries than did
domestic terrorism in the USA from 2001 to 2009. Domestic terrorism constituted for only eight
deaths while international terrorism claimed 3,861 American lives—more than 482 times the
number of domestic terrorist fatalities. Furthermore, of these 3,681 fatalities, approximately 77%
can be solely attributed to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Looking
at the statistical results of the injuries caused by domestic terrorism vs. international terrorism
against the United States from 2001 to 2009, the same analysis as was made with examining the
American fatality statistics can be seen. Domestic terrorism injured only 53 Americans, compared
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FATALITIES INJURIES
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
Domestic International Domestic International
5,107
3,861 Total
2,770
879Excluding 9/11
attacks8 53
to the 5,107 injuries caused by international terrorist attacks against the USA—more than 96% the
total number of that of domestic terrorism. Furthermore, of these 5,107 injuries, 9/11 accounts for
46% of the total number of injuries caused by international terrorism from 2001 to 2009—2,770 to
be exact. As Graph 3.0 shows, most acts of terrorism against the United States occur in the
international community. Since 1969, more than half of all U.S.-targeted international acts of terror
occurred in either Latin America and the Caribbean (36%) or Europe (23%), while the Middle East
and Persian Gulf account for only 20%, the last 20% being attributed to the collective regions of
Asia, Africa, and North America—the least of all acts of terrorism against the United States in the
40 years from 1969-2009 occurring in North America (4%).
Graph 3.0—International Terrorism Against the U.S., by World Region (1969-2009) !
Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014).
!
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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Europe Asia Africa North AmericaLatin America and the
Caribbean
Middle East/
Persian Gulf
Number and Percentage of Total Attacks
1,034 (36%)
649 (23%) 590
(20%)
333 (12%)
148 (5%)
129 (4%)
The whole purpose of the NSA’s various domestic spying software was to collect data
intelligence of individuals with suspected ties to al-Qaeda, and similar terrorist organizations, in
effort to combat the “War on Terrorism” in the name of national security. If statistical analysis of
trends in terrorism worldwide basically dictate one central claim—the great majority of terrorist
attacks against the USA come from outside its borders—why, then, does the United States
government still employ domestic surveillance programs to collect data on it’s own citizens today?
Data shows that homegrown terrorism is proving to be less of a threat to America’s national
security, while the threat of terrorism from the international community is drastically proving to
pose a greater threat to the state, year after year. Terrorism has been the focal point of various
institutional developments that have, as a collective, gradually infringed upon many rights of not
only American citizens, but human beings as a whole: the greatest example being that of the
establishment of Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
!Wilner v. NSA Wilner v. NSA, filed by Thomas Wilner and fifteen other attorneys who provided legal
representation to individuals detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, was a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the United States NSA and Department of Justice (DOJ).
According to the official complaint filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), “Plaintiffs
represent men detained at the U.S. Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as part of the ‘war on
terror.’ Upon information and belief, plaintiffs’ electronic and/or telephonic communications have
been monitored by defendant agencies and records of those communications have been compiled
and retained by the defendant agencies because of plaintiffs’ representation of detainees and
plaintiffs’ international communications with clients, released detainees, family members of
detainees and/or organizations, business and individuals affiliated with detainees outside of the
United States.” Filed on 17 May 2007, the suit demanded that the government comply with
!16
requests made to turn over all records of the NSA’s unwarranted wiretapping gathered on 23
attorneys who have represented or currently represent detainees at Guantánamo.
According to the CCR, the Bush Administration told Congress that attorneys were not
categorically excluded from surveillance under the NSA Program. In addition Philip Shenon
reported in his 2008 New York Times article “Lawyers Fear Monitoring in Cases of Terrorism” that,
“the Justice Department does not deny that the government has monitored phone calls and email
exchanges between lawyers and their clients as part of terrorism investigations in the United States
and overseas,” also reporting that "two senior Justice Department officials” admitted that “they
knew of a handful of terrorism cases since the Sept. 11 attacks in which the government may have
monitored lawyer-client conversations.” In this case, the NSA and Department of Justice both
refused to acknowledge the existence of documentation related to whether the individual lawyers
were being subjected to warrantless surveillance. When the CCR filed, the government defended
the suit stating that any allegations to the existence of records relating to unwarranted surveillance
of the attorneys could be neither confirmed nor denied, a phrase coined into legal doctrine as the
Glomar response. This raised the question, before the Supreme Court, of whether or not the
government could use the Glomar response as a means to adequately refute such requests, even
though any such wiretaps and surveillance are illegal and unconstitutional.
The NSA’s wiretapping and surveillance of these American attorneys violated one of the
oldest legal doctrines in this nation: that of attorney-client privilege. Attorney-client privilege is the
requirement that an attorney may not reveal communications, conversations, and letters between
oneself and ones client, under the theory that a person should be able to speak freely and honestly
with their attorney without fear of future revelation (Hill 2002). In any case, this privilege requires
an attorney, and entitles a client, to not reveal any information that was exchanged during any
attorney-client contact. It is so respected in the realm of the legal system of the United States that
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the only way an attorney may be compelled to breach this privilege is through compliance with a
court order.
The fact that conversations between the plaintiffs and their clients were subject to illegal and
unconstitutional surveillance, simply because they involved detainees at Guantánamo, was a serious
undermining of one’s Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel, especially since the Supreme Court
ruled, in Brewer v. Williams, that “one gains the right to legal counsel at or after the time that
judicial proceedings have been initiated against him,” and that the right to legal counsel implies the
“right to an effective assistance of counsel.” By hamstringing attorney-client privilege, the
government implicitly fosters a climate where the attorney cannot effectively provide legal counsel
for his client. Furthermore, the threat of the use of unwarranted surveillance seriously hindered the
attorneys’ efforts to gather evidence, as it provided to be a huge deterrence for witnesses oversees to
speak freely over the telephone, knowing the likelihood that the U.S. government would be
listening in on and recording their conversation(s). On 4 October 2010, the Supreme Court granted
judgment to the government’s Glomar claim, accepting that they had legal right to refuse to either
confirm or deny the existence of records “relating to ongoing or completed electronic surveillance
or physical searches” relating to any of the plaintiffs individually (CCRJustice.org).
Throughout the past decade, it has become evident, through various cases tried from the
levels of the District Courts up to the Supreme Court, that the National Security Agency, and the
U.S. government, engage in illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical surveillance of millions of
innocent American citizens on a daily basis. While the NSA is the leading force behind domestic
spying programs in the United States, it is also fair to include the Department of Homeland Security
in this discussion of how the reemergence of terrorism and advancement technology have led to
policy makings and practices of unwarranted domestic surveillance on unknowing Americans not
suspected of any criminal activity.
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The Department of Homeland Security “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a vital mission: to secure the nation
from the many threats we face. This requires the dedication of more than 240,000 employees in jobs
that range from aviation and border security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analyst to
chemical facility inspector. Our duties are wide-ranging, but our goal is clear—keeping America
safe.” (DHS.gov). Equivalent to the interior ministries in other countries, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security is a federal government cabinet position—created in response to the terrorist
attacks of September 11th—with the sole purpose of protecting the state and its territories from acts
of terrorism, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. Its stated goal is to prevent, prepare for,
and respond to domestic emergency situations, especially that of terrorism. Focusing more on what
is possible instead of what is probable, the DHS, as many national security scholars would claim,
has the tendency to create widespread fear without making Americans any safer. According to
Benjamin Friedman’s article on Homeland Security in Foreign Policy magazine, “the assertion that
terrorists continue to case American targets stems from the idea planted in the minds of Americans
—by the [DHS] and various media outlets—that terrorists remain hidden in the United States. But
6th FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that there is little evidence that so-called sleeper
cells reside in the United States, even as he warned the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence that he remains ‘very concerned about what we are not seeing.’ After years without a
terrorist attack, perhaps Americans can take what they are not seeing seriously. The assumption that
terrorists are flawless and ubiquitous results in unreasoned fear and overreaction. This ghost is
worse than the reality.”
This phenomenon of excessive fear of terrorism in the minds of millions of Americans,
perhaps, is a reason as to why the constituency has remained complacent with the various spying
and surveillance programs employed by the U.S. government. According to the latest national
survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, and shown in Graph 4.0, among
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Graph 4.0—Public Say Investigate Terrorism, Even if it Intrudes on Privacy !
Source: Pew Research Center and The Washington Post at http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/ (25 April 2014).
1,004 adults, 62% say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible
terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy, while only 34% of adults say the inverse
is more important. These opinions have changed slightly since a similar ABC News and The
Washington Post survey in 2006 when 32% of adults said it is more important for the government to
not intrude on personal privacy, even if that means limiting its abilities to investigate possible
terrorist threats. The actual problem here arises when the U.S. government uses this fear as a tactic
to mask and distract the public from covert development of more advanced technology that doubles
as tools the state has the ability to use, at their discretion, to track and record your everyday
movements and interactions without you even knowing or suspecting. This problem is, in fact, an
!20
0
20
40
60
80
Jan 2006 Nov 2010 June 2013
Investigate Terrorist Threats Not Intrude on Privacy
65%
32%
68%
26%
62%
34%
issue that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has foreseen, and even filed suit on behalf of the
general public against the Department of Homeland Security for beginning to implement policy and
technologies intended for the execution of this new level of domestic and international surveillance.
!DHS and DOT’s Predator Drones On 30 October 2012, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the Department of
Homeland Security, demanding answers about how and why it loans out its Predator drones to other
law enforcement agencies across the nation. According to details of the case listed on the EFF
website, “Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—a division of the DHS—uses and operates
unmanned aircrafts, also known as drones, inside the U.S. to patrol the borders with surveillance
equipment like video and infrared cameras, heat sensors, and radar. However, recent news articles,
as well as a report from inside the DHS itself, show that CBP is expanding its surveillance work,
flying Predator drone missions on behalf of multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement
agencies—including a county sheriff's department in North Dakota, the Texas Rangers, the Bureau
of Land Management, and the Department of Defense.”
Unmanned aircraft or drones come in many shapes and sizes, from as small as a
hummingbird to as large as a commercial airplane, and are designed to carry various types of
equipment that allow them to conduct highly sophisticated and virtually constant surveillance.
Some of the newer drones even carry high resolution “gigapixel” cameras that can “track people
and vehicles from altitudes of about 20,000 feet, can monitor up to 65 enemies of the State
simultaneously, and can see targets from almost 25 miles down range.” (Munchbach 2011). In
January 2012, when the EFF first filed suit against the Department of Transportation (DOT) to
release documentation on authorizations and certifications issued by the department for drone
operations within the state’s borders, EFF Attorney Jennifer Lynch wrote: “Predator drones can
eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, and one drone unveiled at DEFCON [in 2011] can crack
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Wi-Fi networks and intercept text messages and cell phone conversations—without the knowledge
or help of either the communications provider or the customer. Drones are also designed to carry
weapons, and some have suggested that drones carrying weapons such as tasers and bean bag guns
could be used domestically.” She went further to explain that “many drones, by virtue of their
design, their size, and how high they can fly, can operate undetected in urban and rural
environments, allowing the government to spy on Americans without their knowledge.” On 10
December 2011, Brian Bennet reported in his Los Angeles Times article “Police Employ Drone Spy
Planes on Home Front” that the CBP had used one of its Predator drones to assist the North Dakota
Nelson County Sheriff’s Department in finding three individuals suspected of committing a
property theft. In a later article on 28 April 2012, Bennet also reported that the CBP’s “drones often
are unavailable to assist border agents because Homeland Security officials have lent the aircraft to
the FBI, Texas Rangers, and other government agencies for law enforcement, disaster relief, and
other uses.” If these highly sophisticated Predator drones are being funded and developed for the
purpose of defense against serious threats to national security, why is it, then, that they have been
used for solving domestic petty crimes, especially to the extent that the agency charged at the
forefront of protecting our borders don’t have access to them?
In October of 2012, Jennifer Lynch filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for
more information on these drone flights, more specifically who was flying them, where they were
being flown, and for what purpose(s), but to date, the Department of Homeland Security has not
responded to such requests. According the EFF’s website, that same day, she also “filed a second
FOIA lawsuit with the FAA, demanding the latest data on certifications and authorizations that the
agency has issued for public drone flights in the U.S.” Although the FAA did agree to turn over
some files after the initial suit was filed against them in January of 2012, the process remains
ongoing to this day. The agency’s slow response has meant that the information the EFF will
receive will be outdated by the time it is received, and unless a new suit is filed requesting more
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data, it is likely that most of the records from 2012 will not be included. Months after the EFF filed
the initial suit against the Department of Transportation, however, the lawsuit helped to uncover 125
drone certificates and accompanying documents from the Federal Aviation Administration, totaling
in thousands of pages of data.
Drones are sophisticated and powerful surveillance tools. They can be used to gather
extensive data on ones travel and communication records, and the American people need, and have
the right, to know more about how and why such Predator drones are being used to watch them. As
Lynch put it, the “FAA’s foot-dragging means we can’t get a real-time picture of drone activity in
the U.S.” and in doing so, the FAA, and the U.S. government, are yet again infringing upon millions
of innocent Americans’ overarching rights to privacy, including, but not limited to, their
Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and to be secure in their persons from
unreasonable search and seizure.
!The Right to Privacy In order to assert that every American citizen, let alone every human being in the
international community, has the basic right to privacy, one must first establish a relevant and
applicable definition of privacy. While there are a multitude of definitions of privacy, differing
among cultures and individuals, common themes are shared alike. The Haifa Center for Law &
Technology is a renowned interdisciplinary center in Israel, dedicated to the study of the
interconnection between law and technology. In light of the digitally-centralized culture of today
and tomorrow, the following definition of privacy, provided by the Haifa Center for Law &
Technology, shall be adopted and used for the remainder of this paper: “the right to privacy is our
right to keep a domain around us, which includes all those things that are part of us, such as our
body, home, property, thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. The right to privacy gives us the
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ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent,
manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose.” (Yael Onn, et at. 2005).
What then, constitutes an invasion of ones privacy? According to The People’s Law
Dictionary, an invasion of privacy is “the intrusion into the personal life of another, without just
cause, which can give the person whose privacy has been invaded a right to bring a lawsuit for
damages against the person or entity that intruded.” While this does not protect public figures—
who through their celebrity, make their activities considered newsworthy in the public
eye—otherwise, non-public individuals have the right to privacy from: “a) intrusion on one's
solitude or into one's private affairs; b) public disclosure of embarrassing private information;
c) publicity which puts him/her in a false light to the public; d) appropriation of one's name or
picture for personal or commercial advantage.” (Hill 2002).
The government—through various agencies, and new policies and technologies
implemented in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th—has repeatedly, unashamedly,
and unjustly stampeded on every U.S. citizen’s basic right to privacy since the wake of the new
millennium. While this hasn’t yet sparked widespread unrest in the public sphere, the private sector
has actively protested against these infrastructures that have been destroying the fabric of society
and advocated for the Constitutional, legal, and general human rights of all Americans on their
behalf. What would life be without something so basic as one’s right to privacy? On a daily basis,
any communication between you and anyone else being watched and recorded, all of your personal
information posted via social media being watched and recorded, and above all else, your every
physical move being watched and recorded.
To what extent will the American public tolerate the sacrifice of their natural born rights in
the name of national security—especially when such threats to national security, that are being used
as the basis for justification of these surveillance programs, have been proven to essentially be on
the verge of irrelevance anymore? Perhaps it will take a catastrophe to happen, in so far as the
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information collected being hacked and obtained by foreign powers. Or perhaps it will take
government agencies using the software to collect intelligence data on other government agencies,
as can be seen in the recent media coverage of the CIA spying on the computers of members of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
!CIA Spying on Senate Computers According to Halimah Abdullah’s CNN article on the CIA searching U.S. Senate computers,
“The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, veteran Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein,
accused the CIA of secretly removing classified documents from her staff’s computers in the middle
of an oversight investigation.” Only speaking out about this issue out of reluctance because of false
media portrayal, Senator Feinstein spoke out about the accusation made by CIA Director John
Brennan that maybe the Committee obtained the document in an illegal way, while also
simultaneously denying claims that the agency ever searched the Committee’s internal network.
Senator Feinstein responded to this allegation strongly stating, “Our staff involved in this matter
have the appropriate clearances, handled the sensitive material according to established procedures
and practice to protect classified information, and were provided access to the Panetta Review by
the CIA itself. As a result, there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that
Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting counsel general’s referral as a potential
effort to intimidate this staff, and I am not taking it lightly.” (Abdullah 2014).
The issue here is that the Senate Intelligence Committee spent several years, starting back in
2009, looking into the practices of the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11—those enhanced
interrogation techniques—also referred to as torture—as well as the CIA’s detention of people at
secret prisons around the world. Senator Feinstein said the CIA provided upwards of 6.2 million
pages to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but at some point, the CIA had questions about an
internal memo in the Committee’s possession. Wanting to know how the Committee received it in
!25
the first place, the CIA allegedly searched the Senate’s internal network and deleted more than 900
pages from file. Referred to as the Panetta Review, this internal CIA review raised various
questions about the agency’s own tactics. “What was unique and interesting about the internal
documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of
significant CIA wrongdoing” Feinstein stated in her open address on the Senate floor. Normally a
strong ally for U.S. intelligence agencies, Senator Feinstein expressed her concerns that the CIA’s
search may have, besides the Constitutional implications, violated the Fourth Amendment, the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, separation of powers principles, as well as Executive Order 12333,
which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance (Abdullah 2014).
CIA Director John Brennan denied all allegations of computer hacking. According to the
Reuters article “CIA accused of spying on U.S. Senate intelligence committee,” Brennan claimed in
a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank that “nothing could be further from the
truth. We [the CIA] wouldn’t do that.” Furthermore, “In a letter Brennan wrote to Feinstein in
January [2014], which was obtained by Reuters, he acknowledged the data had been deposited in
the part of the CIA computer network to which Senate investigators had access but said he did not
know how this happened.” (Zengerle, et al. 2014). In light of recent electronic surveillance
revelations made by U.S. NSA contractor and fugitive, Edward Snowden, this dispute heightened
concerns about the effectiveness of congressional oversight of U.S. spy agencies. All in all,
Feinstein said she is going to move as early as possible to have her committee’s entire report
declassified and made available to the American public (Zengerle, et al. 2014).
!Theoretical Analysis of 9/11 Attacks For some time, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 11 September 2001,
and the War on Terror that followed, signaled a return to a world of realist security relations, given
the renewed emphasis on the use of force. Contemporary structural realists, such as John
!26
Mearsheimer, have acknowledged that realism, given its focus on states, has little to say about non-
state actors, such as “terrorists.” This can explain why, in fact, this electronic surveillance era came
to be in the United States. The Bush Administration, not even a year in office yet, had experienced
what history would deem the greatest single terrorist attack yet. Because of this, concerns with
strengthening the state became primary to concerns of individual rights and freedoms, for in the
realist frame of thought, there was no other way to secure the general public than to enforce the
strength of the state, doing so via military deployment, drone development, increased transportation
security policies and procedures, and, of course, electronic surveillance programs. While realism
can explain the actions of the state and its response to the attacks, it is limited, first and foremost, by
its assumption of a timeless objective condition of anarchy in which states are the primary actors
(Dunne 2010).
President Bush made an aggressive statement that went on to categorize the philosophy
behind his administration’s counterterrorism actions in his 20 September 2001 address to a Joint
Session of Congress: “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every
nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be
regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Many scholars, however, view what has been
coined as the “Bush Doctrine” as one of a spoiled child having a tantrum because his toy was
broken and thus, began stealing everyone’s toys in revenge. Political scientist and retired USAF
lieutenant colonel Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in her 2007 article “Making Sense of the Bush
Doctrine” that “we are killing terrorists in self-defense and for the good of the world, you see. We
are taking over foreign countries, setting them up with our favorite puppets ‘in charge,’ controlling
their economy, their movements, their dress codes, their self defense projects, and their dreams,
solely because we love them, and apparently can’t live without them.” How then, would one
!27
describe the liberal democracy of the United States today? Would it still be seen to uphold the
morals and rights enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights?
!How does the Liberal Democracy of the USA Operate Today? “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.” (U.S. Constitution). These were the first words
written by our founding fathers some two centuries ago in the Preamble to the Constitution of the
United States. Even though it is fair to keep in mind that there is no way that any of our founding
fathers could have even imagined the world that we now live in, it is even more fair to say that the
U.S. government is very different than the one they sought out in drafting the core documents of our
liberal democracy. Liberal democracies are forms of governments in which a representative
democracy operates under the principles of liberalism—protecting the rights of minorities and,
principally, the individual. Characterized by separation of powers into different branches of
government, free and fair elections between multiple political parties, the rule of law in everyday
life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of civil rights, human rights, civil liberties,
and political freedoms for all persons, a true liberal democracy often draws upon a constitution to
delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social order.
It is clear that our democracy has lost sight of these liberalist principles: government
agencies illegally spy on citizens not suspected of any crimes, undermine the fundamental
structures of government, and lack heavily in providing transparency. All in all, the liberal
democracy of the United States today is more concerned with the obsession of acts of terrorism on
the horizon than with the preservation of our human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties as
expressed in the founding documentation of our constitutional republic that is a liberal democracy.
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We do not live in a country where we can walk and talk freely, as per our First Amendment rights,
but instead live in one where big brother is always watching over our back and threaten to send us
to a secret, out-of-state prison if we say or do something not pleasing to them. We do not live in a
country where the items we inherently possess are truly in fact our own possessions, but instead live
in one where our property is searched and seized every single day: from our physical migrations to
our shared philosophies. Furthermore, we do not live in a country where the rights of the individual
and the minority are protected, but instead live in one where the general minority’s rights are always
exploited by the economic minority who control the vast majority of the country’s wealth. Do we
live in a truly liberal democracy as described in its technical definition? The answer depends on
who you ask. One thing that can be asserted, however, is that if, in fact, we aren’t living in a truly
liberal democratic society, we can reestablish one, but only if and when we truly want.
!Conclusion The U.S. government, through intelligence agencies employed to protect the nation from
foreign threats, infringes upon the rights of millions of innocent, every-day American citizens.
Their domestic surveillance programs are not only illegal—violating various Statutes, legal
precedences, and Acts signed into law—but unconstitutional, infringing upon native resident’s First
and Fourth Amendment rights, while also providing threats to the very structure of our government
—specifically that of the separation of powers.
The Bush Administration truly ushered in America’s reputation of being the “Policing State”
in the international community. Not only have we made enemies out of various foreign nations
because of a realistic approach to reassuring power through preemptive military strike, but will soon
make enemies out of the voting constituency who underpin this liberal democracy that we have
coined “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” If only our nation truly released the
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shackles of monitoring our every step and word, and stopped hiding cowardly behind the veil of
“terrorism” and/or the “war on terrorism.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Howard Baker, and Jane Fonda; what do all of
these people have in common? Aside from the fact that these people are noticeably some of the
most widely-known persons of American history (civil rights activist and leader; sports icon; U.S.
Senator; and Emmy Award, and multiple Academy and Golden Globe Award winning actress), they
were all unknowingly spied on by their own government. If the general public of the United States
does not find reason to stand up and demand the termination of such programs and infrastructures
that hinder our freedoms and rights, while simultaneously threatening the undermining of the
structure of our government, then it won’t be very long before millions of Americans will also be
able to knowingly say that they share that same commonality. Until then, to the state, we will
always be suspect unless proven otherwise.
!"There are more instance of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent
encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -James Madison, 1788
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Philip Shenon, “Lawyers Fear Monitoring in Cases of Terrorism,” New York Times, 28 April, 2008. !Risen, James, and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts—Secret Order to Widen Domestic Monitoring,” New York Times, 16 December, 2005. !Zengerle, Patricia, Doina Chiacu, and Mark Hosenball, “CIA accused of spying on U.S. Senate intelligence committee,” Reuters, 11 March, 2014. !
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