The Impact of PRISM

8/13/2019 The Impact of PRISM

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The Impact of PRISM 1

The Impact of PRISM

Caitlin Wilkinson

Barry University

Professor Esposito


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The Impact of PRISM

The National Security Agency is an intelligence agency operating under the Department

of Defense that is designed to monitoring and analyzing communications (Greenwald &

MacAskill, 2013). Because they are monitoring communications for the safety of The United

States of America, they operate behind the scenes to collect, decode, translate and analyze data

from both inside and out of the United States (Wikipedia). They have been given the go ahead to

gather communications intelligence through multiple means, including wiretapping, information

request, and mass surveillance through multiple acts that have increased the NSAs legal

abilities. A few acts in particular that have granted the NSA additional freedoms include the

Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA(Greenwald & MacAskill,

2013). The most recent power the NSA has been granted is through PRISM, which allows the

NSA to get around some of the limitations in previous acts. Because the NSA monitors and

collects information without individual consent, there are multiple concerns about the program

encroaching on rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).

In essence, PRISM allows the NSA to use the backdoors of online companies like

Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Youtube, Facebook and Apple in order to retrieve information about

clients in question. This backdoor access was granted post 9/11 following the Patriot Act in an

attempt to monitor foreign intelligence. This allows the NSA to retrieve information from clients

of these companies from/in foreign countries as well as individuals in communication with

others in foreign countries (Solove, 2011). While FISA has similar allowances, PRISM allows

the NSA to conduct their searches without individual warrants and security checks. In addition,

PRISM allows the NSA to do this without informing the companies of their intentions


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beforehand. This in itself presents an issue; FISA was designed to allow the NSA surveillance

privileges while maintaining privacy protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights (Greenwald &

MacAskill, 2013). According to the presentation that Snowden prepared, the NSA presented the

argument that FISA provided privacy protections for those who didnt deserve it (2013),

referencing those living outside of the United States. The Patriot of 2001 already enabled the

government to confiscate personal information under section 215 and to monitor you if you are

under suspicion of having contact with a suspect under section 411. PRISM further detracts the

Bill of Rights by encroaching on the First and Fourth and Ninth amendments in numerous ways.

One issue with PRISM and the NSA in general is their disregard for the 9 thamendment

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall notbe construed to deny or

disparage others retained by the people (Bill Of Rights). Those individuals who are being

monitored by NSA under the PRISM program are not privy to that fact, otherwise the

information collection would be jeopardized. In addition, if the companies that PRISM is

backdooring are notified, they are not allowed to inform the client being monitored. As it stands,

the citizens of the United States have a fundamental right to privacy not only under the 4th

amendment but as an American citizen. The manner in which PRISM allows the NSA to operate

strips citizens of fundamental rights of privacy, freedom, and usage of personal property; the

NSA operates on the notion that there is always intelligence to be gathered and that everyone is a

potential target(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right to privacy from unreasonable search and

seizures(Bill of Rights). One argument against PRISM is that it violates our right to privacy that

was adhered to in FISA. According to Solove (2011), If you have nothing to hide, you have

nothing to fear was the general counter-argument towards anti-NSA sentiments. The Nothing


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to Hide, Nothing to Fear argument has one fatal flaw: everything has something to hide,

whether you are conscious of it or not. Information that is retrieved can be misconstrued due to

aggregation or exclusion because those who are accessing your information are merely drawing

their conclusions from small bits of data. Those small bits of data can also be distorted. An

example of data distortion can be found in Soloves article; if you purchased a few books about

how to cook meth, then to the NSA who is collecting your data, it could appear that you are

operating an illegal meth house when in reality you were gathering research for a novel (2011).

When you dont recognize that there is a problem or you acknowledge the issue but protest that

the benefits outweigh the privacy sacrifice, it allows programs like PRISM to further infiltrate

into your fourth amendment rights by accumulating data without reasonable cause. In the case

with PRISM, reasonable cause is typically that you have had contact with suspects or have

interacted with someone from a foreign country(Greenwald & MacAskill, 2013).

To tie everything together, the First Amendment guarantees the public the freedom of

speech(Bill of Rights). This fundamental right should continue on to protect citizens when they

are on the internet or using communication devices that can be monitored. That right has been

blurred by the NSA because everything that is said can be processed and judged to determine if it

is potentially problematic. A fair example of the First Amendment being ignored by the NSA

would be an individual speaking to someone in a foreign country, in this example France, and

could complain about the United States government. A conversation about the structure and

issues perceived within the US Government between the US citizen and the French citizen taking

place on AIM could be monitored under PRISM by the NSA and both individuals could be

monitored from then on due to their speech. The US citizen is guaranteed the freedom of speech


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to express opinion, and should not be treated like a potential traitor to the United States of

America.

While PRISM is fundamentally a fair method of protection, it is also extremely

problematic due to its disregard for fundamental US rights guaranteed to citizens. The Bill of

Rights has been determined to be dismissible by the right powers and under the right

circumstances to be determined by the NSA. Today, privacy is a faade fabricated to provide a

false sense of security for US citizens, which is convenient to the NSA; they can monitor

communications of unwary users who believe that their purchase history, video streams, online

chats and data are safe and the NSA can continue on fairly uninhibited.


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References

Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill. (n.d.). (2013, June 6)NSA PRISM program taps into user dataof Apple, Google and others. Retrieved from

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

National security agency. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

Solove, D. (2011, May 15). Why privacy matters even when you have 'nothing to hide'. Retrievedfromhttp://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/

The bill of rights. (n.d.). Provos. Retrieved fromhttp://discoverthomasjefferson.com/articles/BillOfRights.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-datahttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-datahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agencyhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

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The Impact of PRISM