There Watching

The United States Federal Government has been collecting a plethora of information about their citizens. They can track where we eat to what we spend our money on. Getting this information would be illegal if the Federal Government conducted these investigations. This is because the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution protects all U.S citizens from the Federal Government eavesdropping or electronic surveillance, however, there lie a loophole.  The U.S Feds can purchase or obtain information about their citizens through third party companies. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are a few examples of companies that sell information about their customers to the United States Government.

      After the horrific acts that took place on 9/11, the citizens of the U.S were scared. During this time frame, the United States Government passed the “USA Patriot Act.” This bill gave the FBI the ability to send National Security Letters. These letters are sent out to companies inside the United States and request intelligence, such as personal information about their customers. This is the loophole that the federal government uses to obtain a huge amount of data on the citizens of the United States.

 The United States government does not have the right to spy on their citizens, and should not have the right to purchase this information from a third party company. The idea of buying information is almost as worse than the United States conducting their own surveillance. This encourages major corporations to compete to collect the most information. Corporations will do anything that will earn them money, or anything that will help their relationship with the United States Government. The United States loves to buy the information and the corporations love to sell it. The group that is losing out is the consumers. Programs like Siri and Cortana are prime examples of programs that will take your personal information and store it to a database.

The United States Government is using the “USA Patriot Act” to violate our fourth amendment rights. The future is scary in this subject, with private companies being able to film anyone in public; it could lead to constant surveillance in public areas.  This would be a world where everything you do or say will and can be tracked. The only way to prevent this future of happening is to vote for candidates that are against public surveillance.

Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/do-you-want-the-government-buying-your-data-from-corporations/275431/

http://www.alternet.org/story/155628/america%27s_spy_state%3A_how_the_telecoms_sell_out_your_privacy

https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters