...National Security Should Be More Important Enemy of the state depicts an evil NSA team conducting illegal surveillance on a labor lawyer Robert, who was supposed to have a videotape of a politically motivated murder. Robert’s life was peaceful and happy until he suddenly met his college friend Zavitz in a shop, who passed the videotape secretly to him. Ever since that moment, Robert’s life was turned upside down. A special team in NSA soon discovered that he might have the videotape, and then the team raided his house and planted surveillance devices in order to find the videotape. His every movement was tracked and every word was tapped, which destroyed Robert’s life: he was fired from his work, his bank accounts were frozen, his wife threw him out of home since photos about his meeting former girlfriend were sent to his wife. After stumbling around for a bit trying to figure out what's happening to him, Robert turned to Brill for help, who turns out be an ex-NSA agent and who was responsible for inventing some of the surveillance devices. Together, they fought the NSA using the same techniques used against them, and finally Robert got rid of all his accusation and went back to his peaceful life again. Although the plot of the movie might look like a little Hollywood style, the surveillance tools feathered in the movie, such as, phone wiretapping, Global Positioning System, voice and face recognition system, and some much advanced ones, are generally in use today. Apparently...
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...NSA Surveillance Program The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was created in 1978 as a response to past presidential abuses of massive domestic wiretapping and surveillance that were conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) on many innocent Americans. FISA was designated to limit warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance for national security purposes and to issue the extent to which NSA could seize domestic communications. An executive power would need a warrant approved by FISA and only for the cases where the sole intention for the surveillance was to obtain foreign intelligence information (Skalski 15). Things changed shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 when President Bush secretly gave authorization to the NSA to wiretap Americans on the US soil without a warrant from FISA. By the same year, the Bush Administration passed the Patriotic Act that enabled FBI to demand the sharing of “any tangible things sought relevant to an authorized investigation” (Barnett 4), including strictly domestic records. Also, three days after the terrorist attacks, the Congress passed AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) Act that was a necessity, but it was wrongly used by the Bush Administration as the reason of permission for the massive spying program. Because of the secrecy of these surveillance transmissions, the American public had no idea of the existence of these...
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...Who is Edward Snowden? Edward Snowden, 30, was a three-month employee of a government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. At Booz Allen (he has since been terminated), he worked as a systems administrator at an NSA Threat Operations Center in Hawaii, one of several facilities detect threats against government computer systems. In other words, he was a low-level intelligence government contractor. Background: Edward Joseph Snowden was born June 21, 1983, he grew up in Wilmington, N.C., but later moved to Ellicott City, Md., he told The Guardian. His mother, Wendy, is the chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology at the federal court in Baltimore, a court official told NBC News. His father, Lonnie, is a former Coast Guard officer who lives in Pennsylvania, the Allentown Morning Call reported. A neighbor said he has an older sister who is an attorney. Education: He did not complete high school. He told The Guardian that he studied computers at a community college and obtained a general equivalency degree. A spokesman for Anne Arundel Community College confirmed that a student with the same name and birth date took classes there, from 1999 to 2001 and again in 2004 and 2005. Military service: He spent four months in the Army reserves, from May to September 2004 as a special forces recruit to a 14-week training course, the Army said. "He did not complete any training or receive any awards," an Army statement said. No other details were given...
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...Persuasion, Politics and Propaganda Teneal Rusnak COM/400 September 9, 2014 Margaret Garberina, Ph.D. Persuasion, Politics and Propaganda An issue that seems to raise some concerns in our society would be the National Security Agency (NSA) not only spying on people in our country but also other countries by wiretapping and keeping surveillance on certain people. There have been a number of different laws that have been instated that help to protect our privacy such as the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Acts of 1968 which acknowledged that there were extensive amounts of wiretapping that seemed to be going on without any sort of legal sanctions and without the consent of anyone involved. With this law it helped to protect innocent people and stated that wiretapping should only be allowed only when authorized by the court and should therefore remain under the supervision of the court throughout its duration. However, in 1968 our technology was not as advanced as it is now so this law went through many significant changes over the next forty plus years. By 1986 a new amendment had been written in response to the ever-changing technological advances. The 1968 law only protected individuals who communicated through telephone calls. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 took it a step further to focus primarily on any email that would be transmitted as well as stored in any type of storage device. The biggest improvement came...
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...Ethics in the Government and Public Sector in Electronic Surveillance “Can you hear me now, Yes I can even see you” Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Abstract In todays society the number of computers, tablets, mobile devices will rise to about 65 billion devices connecting to the internet. That not counting vehicles, household applicances, gaming devices. However, with all of these deveices there is a significant benfit that will make our lives easier and one potential theat that invades our privacy called Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance (GPS). This sometimes hidden or masked feature is colleting our personal information, location and sometimes converstation. Laws have have enmpowered government and companies to collect databases of consumers without our consent. With ongoing technology where does the protection beging and the surveillance stop. Ethics in the Government and Public Sector in Electronic Surveillance In the movie Enemy of the State the lawyer played by Will Smith becomes a target by a corrupt politican who kills a congressman for his unwillingness to help with a new surveillance system with satellites. The politican with the help of National Security Aministration agents to destroy the lawyers life by manipulation thru the internet and surveillance. This movie was produced in 1998 and then the technological devices we have now were not that advanced. Little did we know that would become the norm of everyday life of those who possess...
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... WEEK 10 8/28/13 Explain computer ethics Computers are special technology and they raise some special ethical issues. In this essay I will discuss what makes computers different from other technology and how this difference makes a difference in ethical considerations. In particular, I want to characterize computer ethics and show why this emerging field is both intellectually interesting and enormously important. On my view, computer ethics is the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification of policies for the ethical use of such technology. I use the phrase "computer technology" because I take the subject matter of the field broadly to include computers and associated technology. For instance, I include concerns about software as well as hardware and concerns about networks connecting computers as well as computers themselves. A typical problem in computer ethics arises because there is a policy vacuum about how computer technology should be used. Computers provide us with new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action. Often, either no policies for conduct in these situations exist or existing policies seem inadequate. A central task of computer ethics is to determine what we should do in such cases, i.e., to formulate policies to guide our actions. Of course, some ethical situations confront us as individuals and some as a society. Computer ethics includes consideration of...
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...ashfaq 16020248 Junaid sirat Comparative law Edward Snowden. Born in North Carolina in 1983, Edward Snowden worked for the National Security Agency through subcontractor Booz Allen in the NSA's Oahu office. While working there, Snowden began noticing government programs involving the NSA spying on American citizens via phone calls and internet use. Before long, leaving his very comfortable life and $200,000 salary behind, in May 2013, Snowden began copying top-secret NSA documents while at work, building a record of practices that he found invasive and alarming. The documents contained enormous and pejorative information on the NSA's domestic surveillance practices, including spying on millions of American citizens under the name of programs such as PRISM. (Edward Snowden biography) Snowden later forwarded these documents to journalists, from where on June 5th Guardian newspaper released those secret documents about an American intelligence body (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) demanding that Verizon release information on a daily basis gathered from its American customers activities. Also the Guardian and the Washington Times released Snowden's leaked information on PRISM, a NSA program that allows real-time information collection, in this case, solely information on American citizens. Snowden now lives in Russia. One of his lawyers, Anatoly Kucherena, gave an interview with CBS News. Kucherena said that Snowden would seek temporary asylum in Russia and possibly...
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...Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), have defined a framework for legally securing a warrant for searches and tapping into phone lines of the American populace. Sometimes the government uses warrantless wiretapping without proper authorization and it exposes telecommunications companies to legal and financial ramifications. What I will argue in this paper is that warrantless wiretapping is unlawful and not ethical, as it harms citizens and violates their privacy. My position is that it is not violation of personal liberties and is immoral for the NSA to have access data when your average citizen is not a threat. Not completely following this law pertaining to wiretapping deviates from the natural check and balance system of the federal government. The failure to procure a warrant when wiretapping violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, and provokes media criticism. The National Security Administration (NSA) and other government agencies are required to wiretap only with the direct written authority of the FISA-assembled courts through a signed warrant. In rare cases, however, such as an imminent terror plot, against the government should it be allowed to intervene. The law-abiding system of gathering warrants before wiretapping functioned well from 1978 until the 2000s, due in part to company policies that willingly followed the guidelines set by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Letters to the FCC demonstrate that most companies...
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...set up a page specifically to market T-shirts to people and if you want to ensure that many people see it, you can pay Facebook to “push” your post to the maximum amount of people who are likely to be interested in such a product. The services offered are: 1.Communication with friends and family 2.Advertising 3.Marketing 4.Sharing information We chose this organization because it is a very common and popular organization that most of us use and have interest in. Additionally, data mining has become something the general public is aware of because of people like Edward Snowden, formerly of the NSA, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Data mining is the collection of numbers or just information in general. This information is collected for statistical purposes. The data that is collected is processed through mega computers. These computers sift through information and arrange it in a much easier to understand format. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases. It allows users to categorize information from many different angles to summarize the relationship it identifies. To this end, Facebook captures user data using various algorithms to optimize browsing experience based on location,...
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...However, it is an important time for the government and other stakeholders to begin weighing the benefits and costs associated with the surveillance more carefully. In spite of the strong defense by intelligence officials in favor of the NSA programs, the officials fail to table any credible evidence in support of the benefits they suggest. In fact, some initial analysis of the programs indicates that the benefits are dubious. It is true that the United States is a target for terrorist and other malicious groups, state officials often use the threat as an excuse to conduct and promote the activities of the National Security Agency. It may be beneficial in the context of security, but the surveillance programs also jeopardize the activities and operations of other organizations and individuals within the United States. The impact of the activities of the NSA on other parties is a cause for an analysis of the economic effects realized within the economy of the United States by various parties. For the period that the National Security Agency has conducted its surveillance, through its programs, many nations lost trust in the intentions of the USA leading to a strain in economic relations in both private and government sectors. For many years the NSA has used data as a key to preventing attacks. However those practices...
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...The Ethics of the NSA Mass-Surveillance Program University Name Student Name Course Number/Name Professor Name Date Introduction One of the most explosive scandals of the 21st century was involved the National Security Agency (NSA), and the revelations that the agency had set up a robust, warrantless mass surveillance program in the years after the 9/11 attacks. Designed to pick up bits of intelligence that could be used in order to thwart future 9/11 attacks, critics of the program argued that not only was it unconstitutional given the lack of warrants obtained prior to engaging in the program, but that it was ineffective at stopping any kind of real terrorism. Supporters pushed back that the program was an essential tool for fighting terrorists who had become more advanced digitally, often using the internet in order to communicate with each other. Much of the discussion on the program related to the ethical appropriateness of the NSA’s activities. This paper will summarize the NSA’s surveillance program and discuss it from the perspective of utilitarianism and Kantian ethics; in addition, the paper will discuss the author’s personal viewpoint of the program. Summary of the Program The NSA spying program, named the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” by the New York Times, focused on monitoring the communications of between 500 and 1000 people within the United States with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda (Dunn, 2015). Many of these individuals were American citizens,...
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...movie summary based on the rubric given. We watch it in the class for about 1 and a half hour. Below is the summary that I have summarized. McClane is attempting to stop cyber terrorists who hack into government and commercial computers across the United States with the goal to start a "fire-sale" of financial assets. The F.B.I. responds to a brief computer outage at their Cyber-Security Division by tracing down top computer hackers, finding several of them have been killed. Taking others into protective custody, the F.B.I. asks New York City Police Department detective John McClane to collect Matthew "Matt" Farrell. McClane arrives in time to prevent Farrell from being killed by assassins working for a cyber-terrorist named Mai Linh who was working for her boss and love interest, Thomas Gabriel. En route to Washington, D.C. Farrell reveals that he received a large sum of money from Mai to write an algorithm that can crack a security system. As they arrive in D.C., Gabriel orders his own crew of hackers to take control of the transportation grids and stock market, while nationally broadcasting a message threatening the United States. Farrell recognizes this as the start of a "fire sale", an attack designed to target the nation's reliance on computer controls, such that "everything must go". McClane and Farrell are taken by police escort to the secure F.B.I. headquarters, but Mai, exploiting the hijacked transportation network, reroutes the convoy into the path of an assault...
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...The NSA is unrivaled in its unwavering commitment to the safety of our nation- a community of passionate, intellectual individuals from different backgrounds consistently developing and rising to the occasion. I want a career at the NSA because of the agency’s mission, work environment, the people, as well as the opportunity to serve my country in the IC field. As a consequence of the large amount of dependency on technology in our country, the mission of the NSA remains paramount in Information Assurance in protecting the nation’s vital information, as well as being on the offensive through signals intelligence while protecting the privacy of the American public, for the greater purpose in protecting the freedoms and way of life in the United States. As a result, working at the NSA would require one to be committed to continually strengthening and widening their skillset in order to combat the evolving threats in cybersecurity as well as terrorism. I would love the opportunity to constantly applying and challenging myself, while applying critical thinking with purpose and passion to prevent and foresee events that threaten the interests of the United States.. Ever since I was kid, I dreamed of serving my country by becoming a scientist doing research that would help men and women in the military. The opportunity to intern at the NSA will enable me to work on projects that will provide support to the troops and help save lives. My passion is thinking critically and creatively...
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...Computers are a fairly new addition to society, and the impact they have had is enormous. Computer technology has impacted every part of daily life in innumerable ways, for better and for worse. The extreme rapidity at which computer technology advances has produced many unique problems, based in many different areas, that we struggle to solve every day. These problems range from technical limitations and oversights, to skewing of social interactions, to severely outdated political standpoints and laws. As we continue to develop and use computers in everyday life, we must take the time to begin to address and attempt to solve at least some of these issues. Recently, the biggest concern in the computer world has been security, how to secure systems and data, to protect the common user and the integrity of the networks we rely on so heavily. Especially in the last year or so, we have had several major wake-up calls, demonstrating just how important computer security has become. The recent Heartbleed bug discovered in OpenSSL is one of the more critical security bugs to be discovered in the last few years. It's wide-reaching influence, the fact that OpenSSL is installed on hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, left a giant chunk of information open to exploitation. Essentially, on March 14, 2012, an overlooked bug in the implementation of the Heartbeat extension for the open source crypto library made it into the production environment in OpenSSL's 1.0.1 update. Heartbeat...
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...2013, accusations came up that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was often violating online privacy rights with the PRISM Program. They were collecting data from social media, Internet search media, emails and even Skype sessions to create digital profiles of millions of US citizens who have never been accused of any crime. Many showed their dissaproval over this activity. Also, outrage over the Verizon Metadata program revealed by Edward Snowden, resulted in a number of lawsuits being filed, to combat what was viewed as a violation of online privacy rights. Privacy has also been issue on government’s websites. According to several reports, a lot of Federal websites don’t respects the values of Internet privacy. It is a very delicate issue considering the amount of information the government contains. An additional issue that we can make a note of with the government is how they try to get information from companies on their customers. Several years ago, this happened to Northwest Airlines when they received all information on their customers. They are trying to access records of citizens and the right the government has to get these records is an enormous issue in web privacy. One major form of infringement on privacy and security is hacking. It is an unauthorized access into a system in order to gain information. Hacking can take different forms such as monitoring, thievery, vandalism and destruction of computer systems, all of which endangers individuals’ rights to privacy...
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