Too much power for NSA

On June 5th, 2013, the media published a secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court order requiring Verizon Communications to provide the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) with all

of its customers’ telephony metadata, for all communications between the United States and abroad, as well as those “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.” Further reports indicated that such classified orders are routinely sought and obtained with respect to virtually all U.S. telecoms. Furthermore, people noticed that they have a program that can collects data from every phone device, including smart phone, which means that it can collect data from people’s email, Facebook, or any site they are visiting. However, giving power to collect data from people’s privacy is too dangerous; if NSA exploits this power, the balance of power can’t be maintained, and people can have real “Big brother.”

          The data in people’s phone and email is significant; if one can see all of that, one can know about all the relationship and privacy of the people. Let’s say I accidently had a car accident and killed someone and my friends and I are somehow talking about that event through either internet or email; a person in NSA can easily access to this information and know all my privacy. If that person knows me, he can easily threaten me by using this information, and I have to follow him. Although it was purely accident and the court revealed my innocence, I don’t want other people around me to know that I have accidently killed someone. Like this, there are plenty of people who don’t want others to know about their secret; that’s why there is privacy.

          Privacy is the information of people that they don’t want society to know about. However, sometimes they have to reveal their information like when they are making accounts in internet sites such as Google. As a result, in internet, there is important information of people’s names, pictures, home addresses, phone numbers, or even credit card numbers. That’s why when people are signing to internet sites, there are cyber securities to block others to get information from those sites. If a person can know about these data, it means he can know my name, picture, home address, phone number, and my college, and it can be really dangerous. Since NSA is collecting these data, either NSA will have too much power, and it will be hard to regulate NSA since NSA will know about people’s information on the branch that regulates NSA. In worst case, NSA can threaten those people.

          Also, one big problem is cracker. Cracker is a kind of hacker who uses their computer skills in illegal ways; if cracker can hack through NSA’s cyber security, it means that cracker will have information about people’s privacy, and the cracker might sell the information to other people. One might say, internet sites collect data from users and sell it to other, but it’s different in this case. Those internet sites can’t access to my secrets unless I reveal them. For instant, Google can only share data that people can’t know whose data is it. It’s not that dangerous now, but NSA can advance their power by having people’s private data, and eventually become the real Big Brother.

          I understand why NSA wants the power to investigate people’s privacy; by having all those information, NSA might prevent terrorism or other crime activities by collecting random people’s email. However, this action is too risky; I think NSA should be only allowed to collect a person’s data when they can prove that person is involved in a crime; NSA should not have the power to collect random people’s privacy when those people are innocent.