NSA spying controversy

The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency that was founded by the US government. It was originally created to help break foreign codes but has since expanded its purpose to generalized surveillance. The NSA specializes in the use of digital tools to collect information from both persons of interest in other countries as well as Americans that might be helpful to the government.

In 2002, following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush worked with the NSA to create a domestic surveillance program designed to help prevent future terrorist attacks on American soil. In doing so, he allowed the NSA to secretly collect and read the digital communications of American citizens without a warrant. In 2005, The New York Times published an article informing the American public about this program. It was criticized as a questionable legal practice and a violation of Americans’ civil rights. After significant criticism by both activists and the media, President Bush publicly shut down the program. However, in 2013, whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed the NSA had continued to collect digital information related to American citizens.

Background

The NSA traces its origins back to July 1917, when the United States founded the Cipher Bureau of Military Intelligence. Following the end of World War I in 1918, the Cipher Bureau moved to New York City. It also changed its focus from collecting military intelligence to collecting diplomatic intelligence. In many cases, spies at the Cipher Bureau intercepted foreign communications through deals with telegraph companies. The agency was closed in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Simson, who opposed domestic surveillance during peacetime.

Impressed with the success of the Cipher Bureau, the US Army decided to form its own surveillance agency. Named the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS), it provided the United States with valuable intelligence throughout World War II (1939–1945). The SIS’s most famous successes included cracking Japanese military ciphers, allowing the United States to predict key military movements.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman reorganized the SIS into the National Security Agency (NSA). In 1957, the agency’s headquarters was moved to Fort Meade, Maryland. Originally, the existence of the NSA was a closely kept secret. However, by 1969, the NSA boasted a staff of more than ninety thousand employees. Soon, it became impossible to deny the existence of the domestic security agency.

During the 1970s, the NSA was brought under scrutiny by the US Senate Church Committee investigation. This investigation revealed to the public that the NSA had been spying on the correspondence of American citizens, civil rights leaders, and many members of the public who were opposed to the Vietnam War. In response to these revelations, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. This act placed limits on what data the NSA could collect within the United States. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, the NSA was downsized significantly. However, it continued to collect large quantities of information for the US government.

Overview

In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, the NSA took on a prominent role in the American government. It began launching widespread intelligence programs designed to capture and analyze large quantities of electronic data. In 2002, President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to spy on the phone calls and emails of American citizens without warrants or oversight. To accomplish this, Bush issued an executive order that specifically authorized the NSA to wiretap any communications between foreign citizens suspected of having links to terrorist organizations and any of their contacts in America. At this point, the NSA already had a substantial spying infrastructure in place, the authorization simply allowed it to use its programs more freely. Additionally, the monitoring of communications between individuals in the United States still required a warrant.

This program was first revealed to the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The members of Congress were granted only limited information in regards to the program itself but were made aware of its existence. Senator John Rockefeller responded to the news by outlining his concerns about the program’s legality.

In 2005, the New York Times planned to publish an article that would make NSA’s modern capabilities public knowledge. Reporters were tipped off to the wiretapping program by Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who realized that his employer was allowing the intelligence agency to secretly capture data. At the time, the program was secret, and President Bush met with the publisher of the newspaper, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., to convince him not to run the story.

Despite this, the New York Times published its article in December 2006. The article revealed much of the NSA’s surveillance power to the American public, including the warrantless wiretapping program that was set in motion by Bush. Many politicians criticized the program, alleging that warrantless spying was a violation of American citizens’ civil rights. Additionally, many activists began to raise awareness of the wiretapping program. In 2007, Bush publicly revoked the NSA’s permission to spy on American citizens without warrants.

In 2013, the NSA returned to the public spotlight when NSA contractor Edward Snowden initiated one of the greatest leaks of intelligence information in American history.

Snowden was a civilian contractor employed by a consulting company to support NSA. Snowden had become disenchanted and concerned with the legality of the NSA program. Snowden had previously obtained his job to gain access to these materials such that they could be leaked. In June 2013, meeting with a team of journalists in Hong Kong, Snowden divulged classified information in his possesion. Materials provided by Snowden began to appear in global news publications. Snowden fled to Russia where requested and received political asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Snowden published documents proving that the NSA had continued secretly spying on millions of American citizens. The NSA ran a program codenamed PRISM, which involved the widespread collection of Internet and phone communications. The program stored records, and In April 2013, PRISM was actively surveying more than one hundred thousand Americans and passively collecting data on many more.

Snowden’s leakes showed that several American companies were required to send customer data to the intelligence agency. Snowden’s revelations led to public outrage, and renewed discussion of the extent to which the NSA should be allowed to collect data on American citizens.

The legacy of Snowden remains mixed and controversial as he sought the persona of a champion of civil liberties. Snowden continued to live in Russia through the mid-2020s. A hero to thousands, his reputation is considered compromised by others. Much of the classified information leaked by Snowden had no connection to the NSA PRISM program, and the release of this data, which included names of U.S. intelligence officials and assets, endangered a great many people. In 2022, Snowden became a citizen of Russia and continued to serve the government of Putin, a leader who launched a murderous war against Ukraine in 2022. Snowden’s motives have also been questioned as he has been described as a profiteer and a black-and-white moralist.

In 2024, with the Senate’s approval, President Joe Biden reauthorized Section 702 of FISA, which allows the government to perform surveillance on foreign nationals outside of the US without a warrant. However, Section 702 remained controversial to some observers, particularly in regard to how it allowed for the incidental gathering of data on US citizens who interacted with foreign nationals targeted for surveillance.

Bibliography

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"Biden Signs Bill Reauthorizing Contentious FISA Surveillance Program." CBS News, 20 Apr. 2024, www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-signs-bill-reauthorizing-fisa-surveillance-program-section-702/. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

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“Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” New York Times, 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-on-callers-without-courts.html. Accessed 13 Oct. 2021.

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