Spying of the NSA

The past year we all have heard of the NSA spying through social media, phones and all sorts of stuff, we heard of this because of Edward Snowden, an ex CIA- system analyst. He exposed their spying and this has resulted in to a global issue. Because the spying is wrong on so many levels we are here to convince you that what the NSA is doing is wrong.
*attention grabber*
So now that I have your attention I will continue.
Main Point 1: How is it possible that the NSA is spying on civilians?
Sub Point 1: What is the NSA;
I’m going to begin by telling you a little about what the NSA is. The NSA better known as the National Security Agency is the main producer and manager of the signals intelligence for the United States. The NSA is responsible for the protection of U.S. government. The NSA is tasked with monitoring on targeted individuals in the U.S. But the NSA doesn’t just spy on targeted individuals; they spy on every U.S. citizen, they even spy on world leaders. They can spy on anyone around the world, and they can do this through social media, the internet and phones. I will explain this in more detail later.
Ok so now that I’ve talked about what the NSA is, I will tell you guys how it is possible that the NSA is spying on us. Well to begin, the NSA spying program started back when George Bush was the president of the United States, the spying started right after nine eleven, this was in 2001 and that is 13 years ago so consider how long they have been spying. And it only got worse because technology developed, social media got bigger and smartphones were introduced. They wanted to keep the spying private but look how that turned out. The NSA monitored people whom the government thought were related to the Al Qaeda. Soon this led to spying on innocent and harmless civilians of the U.S. and all over the world.

Sub Point 2: The Internet and Social Websites
Now I’m going to talk about the spying through the internet and social sites like Facebook and Google. First of all, you always need to watch out with what you post online.The NSA has direct access to the systems of Google and Facebook, so everything you post or message to someone else is seen by the NSA, these people can just read all your private stuff. Invasion of privacy is wrong and should be stopped. It doesn't matter if what the government's calls surveillance is legal (It’s actually just spying on people but ok), what matters is that the spying is despicable and should be sabotaged and stopped by anybody, it is wrong to invade people their privacy without their knowing of, even if they knew about it you still can’t spy on someone just because.It should be illegal because it's unacceptable. The NSA can surveillance anything we do through all these social sites and most of us have Facebook and a Google account (gmail) so think about it, everything you send or receive has been read by someone at the NSA, this is not right, it shouldn’t even happen. If other people are being punished for spying and invading people their privacy, why is it ok if the NSA is doing it? Not because they are a higher power means it is ok to spy, what the NSA is doing is wrong and they should be stopped.

Sub Point 3: Spying via Smartphones
Now that I’ve rounded up the spying via the internet and social websites I will continue to the spying via smartphones. As I’ve mentioned before the NSA can spy on us through almost anything that’s what makes it so wrong. But since smartphones like iPhones and Androids came out it became even easier for the NSA to invade our privacy. The NSA can even spy on us through our games. Angry birds for example, if spying via our social media isn’t wrong enough they spy on us through our games too! They can almost find out anything through the games, things like age, personal information and gender. Yes the NSA spying is legal, but slavery was legal too, but that doesn’t mean that it is right. Besides the spying through angry birds and other games the NSA can also spy through an app that was created for smartphones to download Jay-Z’s album for free. So The NSA now has all the information of all the people who downloaded this app. What kind of good does this do? It doesn’t help the NSA with anything; these people who downloaded the app are just teenagers that probably don’t have anything to hide from the NSA or things that can hurt The USA. The NSA claims they’re doing it to look for terrorists but the spying has not helped with anything. Besides the NSA’s spying via games and apps on your phone, they can also listen to the phone calls of everyone with Verizon as their provider. How far will the NSA go till they realize that they’re doing something completely wrong and despicable? Reading people their mails and messages is wrong but listening to phone calls of innocent people is just beyond crazy. That the spying is still legal is just unacceptable, as I said before invading people their personal stuff is not right. There are many reasons why the NSA spying is wrong but the main reason is that they’re lying to the world about the whole situation, the government is sugarcoating this situation. And even though the government is trying to make the spying look ok, it’s not ok. And we all should know that what they’re doing is not right. The spying should be stopped as soon as possible!

Now that I’ve told you guys about how they spy and why it’s so wrong Jair is going to continue.

Is the NSA’s “surveillance” really helping?
Benefits don’t seem to outweigh the harms
The NSA’s surveillance was implemented to prevent terrorist attacks. However, the NSA’s spying does not seem to be all that beneficial. There have not been many instances in which the NSA’s surveillance has helped. It has been officially stated that the surveillance only has prevented 1 or 2 terrorist attacks, it was also unable to prevent the Boston bombing which occurred last year. What the NSA’s surveillance has so far really succeeded in doing is eliminating global privacy. It’s a huge invasion of people’s privacy. Not only is this invasion of privacy a problem because it can collect data on what a person is doing at the time, but also because it can create a profile of a person, which could discourage people from speaking freely or associating with others if that information were to be released. What if the people you talk to everyday were to discover something embarrassing or disturbing about you, because it was “leaked”, they probably wouldn’t look at you the same way that they used and might even start avoiding you. The Spying has also damaged the relations between the U.S. and its allies. Trust is a hard thing to come by and once it’s broken it’s hard to rebuild. It could cause problems later when the U.S. tries to deal with other countries. America isn’t the most loved country in the world and something like this just further damages their image. This could cause discrimination against Americans in other countries, something that’s very bad and unwelcome. There is also evidence that there have been instances in which employees of the NSA abused this so-called surveillance. It wasn’t used to spy on potential terrorists, but to spy on their significant other. Checking their emails and phone records of their boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands or wives. The NSA’s spying could also cause people to abandon their phone company or internet providers, because they fear getting spied on which cause the company to go under and you’d have tons more jobless people. Politicians in Europe are especially outraged. Citizens are angry with the United States and are losing faith in American brand names. This is a very bad for American companies and even worse its employees, who could lose their job if the company goes under. Due to yielding to the NSA’s demands some of these companies likely broke laws elsewhere. They could face serious penalties for this later.

Invasion of Privacy
Privacy is our right, everyone has the right to a private life, people may think that that is selfish, but privacy is our right and in a society where personal business can now be exposed on mass Medias, privacy is very important to us. It’s very disrespectful to everyone being spied on. As I mentioned earlier, this “surveillance” hardly seems worth the sacrifice of one’s privacy as it has yet to deliver real results since its implementation. Other intelligence agencies have been successful in preventing attacks in other ways than spying on its own civilians. Furthermore the NSA’s spying is in violation of America’s 4th amendment which states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated”. So people do have the right to be upset that their privacy is being invaded in almost every way possible. It’s like the American government saying that they don’t trust anyone living in the country. The NSA’s surveillance is a very big threat on your privacy. There should be a limit as to how far the NSA and the government can go.

The NSA funding could be money better spent elsewhere
The government of the U.S. has invested millions of dollars into the surveillance program that is supposed to defend the U.S. from terrorist attacks. The money that has been invested into the NSA for their spying program could be money better spent on something that could be more beneficial for the American population. As I stated before that even though the surveillance program was implemented to prevent terrorist attacks, it has yet to deliver a lot of positive results. While safety is a very important thing, I think it’s a waste to invest that kind of money in something that has yet to deliver a lot of positive results. The money could be spent to protect Americans in other ways that does not involve invading everyone’s privacy. It could even be invested in companies to create more jobs for people.

Conclusion
We would like to say to you that you should all watch out with what you post online. Now that you know that the NSA can spy on you through all kinds devices and the internet we hope that you’ll be more careful with what you do and post on the internet. Especially since the NSA can easily obtain your personal information. We’ve hoped that we’ve persuaded you that the NSA is wrong for spying and invading people’s privacy.