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The acts of redemption to amend the infamous surveillance acts which empowered the security agencies may be a day late and a dollar short. For decades now the American security agencies have acted in a manner which puts them in the same league with the Gestapo. The civil right groups in America as mad, as a wrongly shot hog have resented the encroachment of people’s freedom and liberty. Owing to their persistent demands, finally the knees of the US government buckled and it went out to put its record straight by passing for USA Freedom Act in May of this year.
The emotions ran high post 9/11, and provisions, which were incorporated in the Patriot Act to gather phone records of Americans for surveillance. They have been nullified thanks to the Freedom Act; the government can pat itself on the back for it. But what about the NSA surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is it for keeps of the surveillance agencies? You can bet your bottom dollar the act remains intact, and hundreds and thousands of messages, emails, and phone calls contents of Americans who interact with people abroad are still under the microscope.
The concept of surveillance is nothing new to the American society and it has been in prevalence even during the 1950's, and the Church Committee report let the cat out of the bag when it concluded that between 1953 and 1973 around 250,000 first class letters were opened and screened by the CIA, while between 1940 and 1966 as many as 130,000 first class letters and opened by the FBI in eight different cities of US. In 1973 over 300,000 individuals were indexed during CHAOS orchestrated by the CIA, and by 1971 the Army intelligence had collected data on about 100,000 Americans for their scrutiny. Then the pretext was the cold war.
Today the enemy has changed and surveillance multiplied with billions of phone calls recorded and eavesdropped. Millions of dollars spent by the NSA to lure the service providers to grant them access to emails and messages lying in their servers. But the billion dollar question still remains whether the feverish efforts are worth burning carelessly taxpayer’s money to spy on them?
Of course it is relevant as far as the chief of NSA is concerned, and he pleaded with the Senate Judiciary Committee not to scrap the surveillance acts as they hold good to counter terrorism. But since Coon’s age the cockish security agencies have been neck deep in surveillance, then how come they could not detect the 9/11 bombers? How did the terrorist not only sneak into America as legitimates but hijack multiple airliners and ram them into out buildings?
On pretext of protection, fellow Americans privacy has become threadbare and it is up to the policy makers to ensure that the pendulum doesn’t swing off course. It is for the government to come up with alternate policies to counter terrorism without mocking the constitutional rights of the American people.