Spies Amongst Us:

A Research Paper on NSA Surveillance

Justin Freeman
Chicken Parm Squad
Professor Tana Schiewer

Table of Contents
Executive Summary -

Rationale

Programs and Regulations

PRISM

Costs of Domestic Surveillance

Benefits of Domestic Surveillance

Recommendation

Works Cited

11

Executive Summary:
In June of 2013, Edward Snowden revealed to the press and the world that the NSA was secretly
tapping into phone calls, personal computers, and taking similar actions in order to keep an eye
on the general public. Snowden also exposed countless classified documents describing the
measures that the US government was taking in order to keep an eye on the population. The NSA
committed these invasions of privacy in order to make sure terrorists werent being harbored
within US borders and to try and uncover any terrorist plots being routed through the US.
Described in the documents leaked by Snowden, the NSA has intercepted and interpreted the
communications of over a billion people worldwide. The NSA uses cell phones to track millions
of people as they travel around the planet as well as capture private messages sent to and from
people in order to obtain information. I plan on researching what kind of information the NSA
covertly intercepted and what their purpose for doing so was. I also plan on investigating to find
out if the NSA has actually accomplished anything with this invasion of privacy, as well as
investigating viewpoints from both sides of the controversy.

Rationale
This topic is important to me because I will likely be working in cyber security in the future,
particularly with Northrop Grumman (which is often contracted to do work for the NSA). I
would like to research this topic so I can learn what the NSA does in terms of morally grey
actions. I would also like to learn more about why the NSA takes such actions and whether or not
these actions can be justified. This is important to others because the NSA is suspected to watch
almost everyone in the country, so those who are being watched may want to know more about
how/why theyre being watched. It can also be important to others because the information that
the NSA obtains can also be used to stop terrorist and anti-American plots before they can be
carried out, and whether or not this justifies the immoral invasion of privacy.

Programs and Regulations

In a recent interview conducted by John Oliver on his show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,
Oliver scored a rare opportunity and was able to travel to Russia to interview Edward Snowden.
Edward Snowden is the man who leaked thousands of classified documents that detailed NSA
domestic surveillance and was forced to flee the country. In the interview, the two discussed not
just what kind of surveillance the NSA is using on the population, but also the impact of
Snowdens reveal and its effect on the average American citizen. Oliver asked Snowden at one
point which government organizations could have a copy of a nude image of Oliver, listing off
organizations. He used the example of a nude image of himself to try and raise attention and
awareness to this issue. People seem to care much more about what the government knows about
them and the lengths surveillance programs such as PRISM and MYSTIC, two programs that the
NSA uses in order to obtain domestic information, go through in order to obtain that information

when that information is nude images as opposed to tax information, personal information, etc.
Snowden responded to the inquiry about Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(an amendment to the act made in 2008 allowing the government the power to monitor foreign
communications) by saying yes [The amendment containing Section 702] allows the bulk
collection of internet communications that are one end form If you have your email
somewhere like Gmail hosted on a server overseas anytime it crosses outside of the borders of
the United States, your junk ends up on the database Even if you send it to someone within the
United States, your wholly domestic communication between you and your wife can go from
New York to London and back and get caught up in the database. This kind of loophole is used
to access private, domestic information through a foreign surveillance policy. This also shows
that the NSA doesnt specifically target any specific kind of communication; it tries to catch and
withhold any kind of it can obtain just in case it may be necessary to review or use later. Oliver
also asked Snowden about Executive Order 12333, which was amended in 2008 to further
expand the governments power to collect and analyze information. Snowden responded by
saying EO12333 is what the NSA uses when the other authorities arent aggressive enough or
theyre not catching as much as theyd like. He then discussed using Gmail again, which
transfers emails from varying databases, some of which are located outside the United States
borders. The second information leaves/enters United States borders, the NSA is able to get a
copy of that information. Oliver then brought up PRISM, which is a surveillance program
created and powered by the government and is a cornerstone in the NSAs efforts towards
collecting domestic and foreign intelligence. Snowden then said PRISM is how they pull your
junk out of Google with Googles involvement. All of PRISMs partners, people like Yahoo,
Facebook, Google, the government deputizes them to be sort of their little surveillance sheriff.

After this, Oliver mentioned upstream surveillance, which is a means that NSA uses of collecting
information from the backbone of the internet (hubs where information frequently passes).
Snowden said Upstream is how they snatch your junk as it transits the internet. Next, they
discussed MYSTIC, and Snowden described it as the organization that gathers information
through telecommunications as opposed to information transiting the internet. He also says that
they have not just the duration of telecommunications, but also the content of those
telecommunications. However, they only keep content from calls being routed to/from/through a
few countries. Snowden, near the end of the interview, made a very compelling statement. He
said, in response to Oliver asking whether we should or shouldnt continue taking photos of our
junk until this is all sorted out, you shouldnt change your behavior because a government
agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If you sacrifice our values because we are afraid,
we dont care about those values very much. The interview brought about a new kind of
thinking and helped raise awareness of just what kind of information the government collects on
domestic communications. Not only that, but it also brought to light the fact that the government
doesnt hand pick information to collect; the government tries to simply collect as much
information as possible. Through the use of foreign servers, NSA, PRISM, MYSTIC, and other
such surveillance programs are able to use foreign surveillance laws and regulations to collect
domestic information.

PRISM
As previously mentioned, PRISM is a program that allows the NSA to collect information from
companies like Google and Yahoo. They also take this information and store it in case it needs to

be used and analyzed sometime in the future. According to an article in The Guardian by James
Ball and Dominic Rushe, PRISM allows the NSA to collect material including search history,
the content of emails, file transfers and live chats. The program, although it can only legally
collect information that is one way, can collect things that we wouldnt expect. Things like live
chats, including both voice and text, was something that came as a shock. Live voice chat can
actually be considered one way because the information from one user is sent to another, and the
other user sends his information back on a separate channel, making it one way. However, not all
voice communications are set up like this. Some programs like Skype and Google Hangout are
two-way communications, but Google, for example, is a partner with PRISM and does record
and store the contents of Google Hangouts for PRISM. According to the article, several working
members of the partners of PRISM denied any working relationship with the program. An Apple
spokesperson even said that they had never heard of the program, even though Snowden
revealed Apple as a PRISM partner.

COSTS OF DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE

As previously mentioned, there are countless costs to the domestic surveillance. For one, there is
a loss of privacy as well as a lost of public trust of the central government. With a loss of public
trust of the government, people are less likely to support the government in future endeavors.
With the government surveying citizens communications, people are still just as likely to
commit illegal acts, and the government usually wont stop things unless they're deemed acts of
terror. Another issue with gathering this sort of information is it is technically an illegal search
and seizure, so any evidence gathered this way cannot be used in any court in the US, so the
information is only used to prevent crimes from occurring, rather than punishing people for
crimes that have been committed.

BENEFITS OF DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE

There are some benefits of domestic surveillance by the NSA. However, these benefits are vastly
outweighed by the drawbacks. The government and the NSA claims that the PATRIOT Act, as
well as several of the organizations and laws previously mentioned, have been able to
prematurely halt terrorist plots to attack US soil since September 11, 2001. According to an
article written by Ellen Nakashima in the Washington Post, there have been approximately 225
cases that the government claims they were able to stop terrorist attacks before they happened,
thanks to the PATRIOT Act and accompanying factors. However, after Nakashima did some
analysis of the numbers, she states that an analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United
States since the Sept.11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the blunk collection of phone records
by the National Security Agency has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of
terrorism. She goes on to write that, of the information gained through bulk domestic
surveillance, the NSA counterterrorism program was not essential to preventing attacks and
that much of the evidence it did turn up could readily have been obtained in a timely manner
using conventional orders. Evidence such as this shows that the major benefit of domestic
surveillance (the ability to gain enough knowledge to predict future terror attacks and stop them
before they can be carried out) is actually not as great a benefit as the NSA and the US
government would like the population to believe. In fact, it appears that the US government and
the NSA are using these statistics in a failed attempt to justify breaking the fourth amendment to
the Bill of Rights, which states that it is unconstitutional and illegal to carry out unwarranted
search and seizures. This is truly the only apparent benefit to domestic surveillance by the NSA
and the US government.

RECOMMENDATION
As I have shown in this paper, there are countless issues with the US government spying on its
domestic population and very little benefits to its citizens. The invasion of privacy, breaking of
the Bill of Rights, and putting too much power in the hands of the central government is too high
a price to pay for a more secure nation. Even the security promised by these invasion has been
shown to be easier to obtain. With this much power going to the NSA and the US government,
we are rapidly approaching the dystopian world depicted in George Orwells 1984, a world
where Big Brother haunts its citizens and controls all of the actions taken by the citizens. It is
my belief that the NSA should be restricted from collecting domestic communications and
domestic information without a court-issued warrant and things such as Section 702 should be
revisited and programs such as MYSTIC and PRISM restructured so they no longer get away
with committing unconstitutional acts. As mentioned in Nakashimas article, the terrorist attacks
stopped by government surveillance could have been effectively halted without the need to bend
the Constitution. Finally, Snowden told us you shouldnt change your behavior because a
government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If you sacrifice our values because we
are afraid, we dont care about those values very much.

Dean, Mike, and George Orwell. 1984. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2003. Print.
Greenwald, Glenn, and Ewen MacAskill. "NSA Prism Program Taps in to User Data of Apple,
Google and Others." The Guardian[London] 7 June 2013: n. pag. Print.
"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance." Interview by John Oliver. Last
Week Tonight. HBO. 5 Apr. 2015. Television.
Nakashima, Ellen. "NSA Phone Record Collection Does Little to Prevent Terrorist Attacks,
Group Says." The Washington Post[Washington D.C.] 12 Jan. 2014: n. pag. Print.