Should The United States Government Have The Right To Monitoring Internet Privacy?

Every day, the average human spends about ten hours on the internet according to a report by CNN. With so much of people’s lives being spent surfing the web, the government has been finding ways to monitor the activity. As technology becomes more advanced, more of our lives are contained on the internet, so the question, “to what extent in the U.S. does the government-federal, state, and local-have the duty to monitor internet content,” has arisen. I believe the U.S. government has the right to monitor their citizens activity on the internet to protect the country from dangerous activity and terrorism, but it cannot intrude on their constitutional rights. The U.S. has been monitoring private data to ensure the safety of the citizen through …show more content…
The primary purpose of this act was to allow the government surveillance of people in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks. The federal, state, and local governments have described their monitoring of internet usage as only a form of a safety precaution in hopes of protecting their citizens. This power that was granted to the United States government from the Patriot Act is only used when necessary in cases where suspicion is raised, and then they may subpoena information from the internet provider or obtain a search warrant. Title II of the Patriot Act allows the search to be executed with a search warrant, but the suspect does not need to be informed until after the search, nor do they need to be present during the search. This, however, does not contradict the Fourth Amendment because of the Stored Communications Act of …show more content…
The NSA is part of the United States Department of Defense, and it is under the advisement of the Director of National Intelligence. While the original purpose of the unit that evolved into the NSA was to decipher coding during World War II, now, they focus on internet data. Today, the NSA monitors the internet, collects data, and processes the information they collect to ensure the safety of the nation from threats at home and on a global level. The NSA is able to intercept private data online without a warrant. They keep a record of all of the data they collect, and they pass incriminating data onto the federal government to be handled in terms of prosecuting the necessary people. The director of the NSA, Keith Alexander, explained to the Senate that the NSA’s surveillance programs have been very successful in directly stopping attacks globally and nationally. An example of this was in 2009, the NSA intercepted information that prevented a bombing of the New York City subway system. Barack Obama even credited the NSA for stopping fifty-four possible attacks on American Citizens. This goes to prove that the governments monitoring of personal internet is a necessary tradeoff in order to protect the lives of the