Writer's choice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words - 1

Writer's choice - Essay Example According to the United Nations, terrorism is a criminal activity that is calculated or intended to produce a state of fear in the civilian population. After 2001, September 11 attacks, the U.S. government termed all kinds of non-state force ‘terrorism. Terrorism results from religious extremists, states, insurgents, and criminals. Due to the challenges faced by the government to fight terrorism, new technologies have emerged to assist in the fight against terror. Some of these technologies include the monitoring of private communications of individuals around the world and mass surveillance of U.S. citizens. The DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) reported that it has created an information technology that could allow access to personal identifiable information to be in the war on terror. As a result, this has attracted a lot of questions from the general public as well as political bodies on its effectiveness, legality, and ethical boundaries. The concern revolves around the likelihood of the government utilizing personal information on permanent denizen aliens and U.S. citizens that has been gathered by private or public organizations without their consent. According to NSA, there are two programs that focus on the foreign and domestic surveillance. The local program, ‘metadata program functions by section 215 of the USA Patriotic Act and consist of gathering of all record data inclusive of times of calls and phone numbers. The foreign program ‘PRISM program works according to section 702 of (FISA) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA Act permits a government to perform surveillance that targets the content of communication by non-U.S. citizens that are abroad. This inspection obtains foreign intelligence data. President Obama in 2014 acknowledges the ‘legitimate privacy interests of the non-U.S and U.S. individuals as conformity to fundamental principles. He defines the activity of foreign intelligence