Since the unfortunate terror attacks on September 11 2001 the government of the United States of America have been conducting a so called "War on Terror." Well, with every war there are unintended casualties. The unintended casualties in this war just happen to be every American citizen, anyone who uses the services of American companies, or anyone who uses the internet in a normal capacity. Through the excuse of national security the United States government has been able to gather massive amounts of data on American citizens without their knowledge or consent. Through laws like the USA PATRIOT ACT and the abuse of power from government officials, the government has a stranglehold on American telephone records, personal data, and anything else they can get their hand on.  The systematic collection of the data belonging to American citizens is unethical and should be stopped in order to protect the civil liberties of American citizens.

Knowing the state of internet privacy laws before September 11th 2001 is important to understand how the government was able to pass laws that violate the privacy of American citizens. The basis for U.S. law is always in the constitution, and the U.S. Constitution says extremely little about privacy. Maureen S. Dorney, a graduate from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, says that "Although the right to privacy is not expressly provided for in the United States Constitution, the courts have used the label 'privacy' for certain fundamental personal rights that are inferred from the Bill of Rights" (638).  The Privacy Act of 1974 was established to attempt to balance the need for the government to gather and use personal information and an individual's interest in controlling what information the government has. The act states that federal agencies may only have records that pertain information about an individual that is relevant to the agencies purpose.  This information must be accurate and it should be collected from the individual if at all possible (Dorney 645).  The Privacy Act was enacted due to the revelations of abuses of privacy made by the FBI, CIA, and the NSA during the Cold War, namely during the Nixon administration. The FBI had a close relationship with the executive branch during Nixon's Presidency. Nixon was provided with lists of political dissidents that he was then able to target with tax investigations. The FBI was one of the main offenders during this time period, contributing almost all of the information in the CIA's CHAOS program (Levinson-Waldman 6). At the end of the program's existence, it's computer system nicknamed "HYDRA" contained information about 300,000 Americans. The FBI and CIA were not alone in surveilling the general public.  The NSA made watch lists of American citizens and made copies of almost all correspondence leaving the United States, which was then analyzed by the CIA (Levinson-Waldman 7).  According to Rachel Levinson-Waldman, from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, "The Privacy Act, intended to help guard American's personal information, is increasingly little more than a fig leaf" (7).  The act requires that agencies must specify what the information stored in their databases are used for.  In reality, the uses are usually not very specific. Along with the non-specific uses, information can be shared with agencies that are not under the Privacy.  And even sharing information with other agencies under the Privacy Act is not at all regulated. This allows information that was originally gathered for one purpose to be used for a different one (Levinson-Waldman 7).  After most of this information became public there were efforts to suppress government agencies abilities to collect unnecessary information, such as the formal guidelines enacted by Attorney General Edward Lei for the Department of Justice in 1976 to limit the FBI and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which inhibited surveillance of First Amendment activities (Levinson-Waldman 8). 

All of the progress made in the late 1970's that helped protect Americans' privacy was quickly undone in the chaos that existed in post September 11th America.  According to Rachel Levinson-Waldman, "The legal and policy changes enacted in the subsequent years wrought two main changes: the government no longer needed a criminal predicate to gather information about Americans, and the information that was collected could be retained for long periods and often disseminated widely" (8). Six weeks after September 11th, the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted. Before the Patriot Act, sensitive information could only be collected about a person if that person was an agent of a foreign power.  Now, under the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may now order the release of any information to federal agencies and law enforcement if the information is relevant to the investigation. And according to Rachel Levinson-Waldman, "... the term 'relevance' has been interpreted since 2006 to allow bulk collection of Americans' phone records because some small number of them may at some point in the future be germane to an FBI investigation" (8). Another portion of the Act allows the use of National Security Letters. National Security Letters are similar to a subpoena where the federal government can request information about individual's financial history, communications, and other information collected by private companies. The National Security Letters are kept secret and the subject of investigation have no idea that the government are collecting information about said individual (Levinson-Waldman 4, 9).  Along with the Patriot Act, Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey expanded the powers of the FBI post September 11th. Ashcroft allowed FBI agents to attend religious and political events to gather information without any suspicion that something illegal would happen or be discussed, and Mukasey gave the FBI the power to start an investigation with "no particular factual predication" (Levinson-Waldman 9).

On April 28, 2015 bill H.R.2048, otherwise known as the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015, was introduced into congress. The was passed by the House of Representative with a vote of 338-88 on May 13. On June 2, this bill passed through the senate with a vote of 67-32 and signed into law by President Barack Obama on the same day.  This bill had several important effects on the state of surveillance in the United States, and it has three major goals. The most important part of this bill is it's efforts to protect the civil liberties of American citizens ("USA"). It does this by outlawing Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the FISA pen register authority, and some national security letter statutes ("USA").  To end bulk collection, this bill prevents the government from overstepping its bounds by preventing unspecific data collection, such as requesting data from an entire area ("USA").  To promote transparency, this bill allows companies to challenge the gag orders that are contained within national security letters ("USA").  The next portion of the bill is designed to continue to improve transparency by amending parts of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("USA").  It starts by adding an unbiased, third party, panel of experts to the FISA court ("USA").  Their goal is to provide direction with certain matters presented to the court ("USA").  For example these matters could include things like privacy, technology, or legal matters ("USA"). This bill also makes all of significant interpretations of the law made by the FISA court public ("USA").  Continuing the transparency trend, under the USA Freedom Act companies that receive national security orders will have more options in dealing with them and being transparent with customers ("USA").  The bill also aims to strengthen national security by closing loopholes that make it difficult for federal agencies to track suspected terrorists in the country while preventing tracking on American citizens ("USA").  Overall this bill helps end some of the current issues that Americans have with Patriot Act and other government spying programs, but other still think it does not go far enough. It is indeed a step in the right direction, and it shows that the government is willing to work to fix the issues, but more can still be done. 

With all of this information, you might be thinking about what you can do to protect yourself from these drastic invasions of privacy.  With a Presidential election happening in just a couple of months, the best way to change the political landscape is to vote for a President that shares similar views as you do. The two current democratic frontrunners are Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Senator Sanders is very outspoken against the Patriot Act, and similar government surveillance programs. Senator Sanders has stated that "The originally was passed by Congress in 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I voted against it. I voted against reauthorizing the law in 2005 when I was still in the House and voted 'no' again in 2011 ... ". The senator believes that there needs to be balance between protecting American citizens from its enemies without undermining their freedom (Sanders).

Hillary Clinton's stance on surveillance differs greatly from Senator Sanders. In December of last year, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called for more surveillance (Frizell).  She believes that increased surveillance of social media and other parts of the internet will help to prevent terrorist organizations like ISIS from recruiting in America (Frizell). Along with greater internet surveillance, Clinton wants to increase surveillance on individuals who travel to countries in the Middle East and countries that contain known terrorist organizations (Frizell).  There are several problems with increasing surveillance on the internet.  First of all, the internet is not U.S. exclusive.  Once you increase surveillance on the internet, you start spying on every country that has access to the internet. This could obviously cause major international political scandals and strain relationships with countries that do not need to be strained further. Senator Sanders is obviously a better option than Hillary Clinton when it comes to the democrat candidates for president. 

The two current Republican front runners for the presidential nomination are Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz. Trump's stance is as worrying as Clinton's.  Trump's stance is that more surveillance would be good for the country and it would help to protect us (Byrnes). Trump also said that he would be fine with restoring provisions in the Patriot Act that were taken out with the passage of the USA Freedom Act (Byrnes). Trump's reasoning is that he would like to "err on the side of security"  (Byrnes).  While Trump's reasoning is sound, his methodology would not be as helpful as he thinks. Spying on your own citizens is not a way to secure your country, but rather increase hatred for the politicians and federal officials who are conducting the surveillance.  Senator Ted Cruz's stance is nearly opposite that of Trump and Clinton. Cruz, being a co-sponsor of the original USA Freedom Act, does not support the return to mass surveillance programs like the ones in the Patriot Act that was eliminated by the USA Freedom Act (Roberts). In a national security speech, Senator Ted Cruz said "... more data from millions of law abiding Americans is not always better data" (Roberts).  Cruz has a good point, collecting more data makes it harder for federal officers to sift through all of it and find the data they are searching for.  Cruz also points out that having so much data collected provides the government with an opportunity for abuse (Roberts).  As far as republican nominees go, I would support Senator Cruz of Donald Trump for his stance on government surveillance.

Several tech companies that have large user bases have come up with creative ways to circumvent some of the government's surveillance policies, particularly those that try to hide the surveillance from the people being watched.  A warrant canary is named after the birds that miners used to detect harmful gasses ("What is a warrant canary?").  Because the canaries were more susceptible to the toxic gasses than humans they would die before any harm came to the miners ("What is a warrant canary?"). Once a canary died, the miners knew that it was time get out of the area before the invisible toxic gas could harm them ("What is a warrant canary?").  A websites warrant canary comes in the form of a statement released by the website, usually during yearly transparency reports ("What is a warrant canary?").  Warrant canaries are most notably useful against national security letter, which contain gag orders that prevent the receiver of the letter from talking about it ("What is a warrant canary?"). Some notable companies that use warrant canaries are Pintrest, Tumblr, Adobe, and until recently Reddit ("What is a warrant canary?"). The popular internet forum killed it's warrant canary in their latest transparency report, essentially alerting their users that they had received a national security letter ("What is a warrant canary?").  I believe that warrant canaries are a smart way of keeping the public informed of when the government comes snooping and more companies should look towards implementing some type of warrant canary.

After the presidential election is over, you can still start change by contacting your local congressmen and women. These are the people who represent you in the federal government and these people are more likely to listen to you than someone like the President. Vote in every possible election and vote in people and policies that will protect your civil liberties. There are other methods of protecting your privacy without having to wait for the long and arduous political process to get it's feet moving and start making real change. Some things you can do is to start and limit your presence online. Posting information on public websites makes it easier for people to legally find your information.  At a TED talk in march of 2015, privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian discussed ways to avoid the backdoors built into modern day phone systems ( Soghoian).  His main piece of advice was to use services by companies that had built encryption software into their services, instead of using services that had been built with surveillance in mind (Soghoian).

