Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1AC Inherency
The recent USA Freedom Act, did not reform the NSAs the
mass collection of domestic communication under Section 702
of the FISA Amendments Act.
Goitein 15,
Elizabeth, Co-Director of the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty and National
Security Program, 6-5-2015, "Who really wins from NSA reform?," MSNBC,
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/freedom-act-who-really-wins-nsa-reform
The USA Freedom Act will end the bulk collection of phone metadata and prohibit similar
programs for any type of business records under foreign intelligence collection
authorities. For phone records, the government may obtain metadata on an ongoing basis only for suspected
terrorists and those in contact with them. For other types of records, the government must tie its request for
records to a specific selection term, such as a person, address, or account. Given the surge in surveillance since
9/11, the USA Freedom Acts imposition of constraints on collection is historic. Indeed, the USA Freedom Act is the
most significant limitation on foreign intelligence surveillance since the 1970s. If faithfully implemented a critical
Even under
USA Freedom, however, the government is still able to pull in a great deal of
information about innocent Americans. Needless to say, not everyone in contact with a suspected
caveat, to be sure the law will meaningfully curtail the overbroad collection of business records.
terrorist is guilty of a crime; even terrorists call for pizza delivery. Intelligence officials also may need to obtain
records like flight manifests that include information about multiple people, most of whom have nothing to do
with terrorism. Some of this overcollection may be inevitable, but its effects could be mitigated. For instance,
agencies could be given a short period of time to identify information relevant to actual suspects, after which they
would have to destroy any remaining information. USA Freedom fails to impose such limits. More fundamentally,
bulk collection of business records is only one of the many intelligence activities that abandoned the individualized
Until a few years ago, if the NSA, acting within the United
States, wished to obtain communications between Americans and foreigners, it had
to convince the FISA Court that the individual target was a foreign power or its
agent. Today, under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, the NSA may target
any foreigner overseas and collect his or her communications with Americans
without obtaining any individualized court order. Under Executive Order 12333, which governs the
NSAs activities when it conducts surveillance overseas, the standards are even more lax. The result is mass
surveillance programs that make the phone metadata program seem dainty in
comparison. Even though these programs are nominally targeted at foreigners, they
incidentally sweep in massive amounts of Americans data, including the content
of calls, e-mails, text messages, and video chats. Limits on keeping and using such information
are weak and riddled with exceptions. Moreover, foreign targets are not limited to suspected
terrorists or even agents of foreign powers. As the Obama administration recently
acknowledged, foreigners have privacy rights too , and the ability to eavesdrop on any foreigner
suspicion approach after 9/11.
overseas is an indefensible violation of those rights. Intelligence officials almost certainly supported USA Freedom
because they hoped it would relieve the post-Snowden pressure for reform. Their likely long-term goal is to avoid
changes to Section 702, Executive Order 12333, and the many other authorities that permit intelligence collection
calculus, USA Freedom may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. But if the law clears the way for further reforms across the
The answer
to what USA Freedom means for our liberties lies, not in the text of the law, but in
the unwritten story of what happens next.
full range of surveillance programs, history will vindicate the privacy advocates who supported it.
The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only
abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the
intercepted messages and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama
administration has not been willing to address. Among the most valuable contents which The Post will
U.S.residents.
not describe in detail, to avoid interfering with ongoing operations are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project,
double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders
into U.S. computer networks. Months of tracking communications across more than 50 alias accounts, the files show, led directly to
the 2011 capture in Abbottabad of Muhammad Tahir Shahzad, a Pakistan-based bomb builder, and Umar Patek, a suspect in a 2002
terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali. At the request of CIA officials, The Post is withholding other examples that officials
stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and
disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded
nevertheless. In order to allow time for analysis and outside reporting, neither Snowden nor The Post has disclosed until now that he
closely controlled data repositories, and for more than a year, senior government officials have depicted it as beyond Snowdens
reach.The Post reviewed roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages
long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts. The material spans President Obamas first term, from
Privacy
Jake, Center for Democracy and Tehcnology Fellow on Privacy, Surveillance, and
Security. Previously served as a law clerk for Senator Al Franken on the
Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, and as a policy fellow for
Senator Robert Menendez. "Why Average Internet Users Should Demand Significant
Section 702 Reform," Center For Democracy & Technology., 7-22-2014,
https://cdt.org/blog/why-average-internet-users-should-demand-significant-section702-reform/
Section 702 Surveillance Is Fundamentally More Invasive
While incidental collection of the communications of a person who communicates with a target is an inevitable
feature of communications surveillance, it is tolerated when the reason for the surveillance is compelling and
surveillance is conducted are reasonably designed to result in the targeting of non-Americans abroad and that
This
As another example, under traditional FISA for intelligence surveillance in the U.S. of people in the U.S. your
communications could be incidentally collected only if you were in direct contact with a suspected agent of a
foreign power, and additionally if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had affirmed this suspicion based on
And, these invasions are magnified because the data is the full
content of the communication.
Goitein 15,
Elizabeth, Co-Director of the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty and National
Security Program., 6-5-2015, "Who really wins from NSA reform?," MSNBC,
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/freedom-act-who-really-wins-nsa-reform
Some of this overcollection may be inevitable, but its effects could be mitigated .
For instance, agencies could be given a short period of time to identify information relevant to actual suspects, after
which they would have to destroy any remaining information. USA Freedom fails to impose such limits. More
fundamentally, bulk collection of business records is only one of the many intelligence activities that abandoned the
suspected terrorists or even agents of foreign powers. As the Obama administration recently acknowledged,
foreigners have privacy rights too, and the ability to eavesdrop on any foreigner overseas is an indefensible
they saw it as the first skirmish in a long battle to rein in surveillance authorities. Their eye is on the prize: a return
to the principle of individualized suspicion as the basis for surveillance. If intelligence officials are correct in their
calculus, USA Freedom may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. But if the law clears the way for further reforms across the
The answer
to what USA Freedom means for our liberties lies, not in the text of the law, but in
the unwritten story of what happens next.
full range of surveillance programs, history will vindicate the privacy advocates who supported it.
Sinha, 2014
G. Alex Sinha is an Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch
and the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, July 2014
With Liberty to Monitor All How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism,
Law, and American Democracy Human Rights Watch,
http://www.hrw.org/node/127364
The United States government today is implementing a wide variety of surveillance
programs that, thanks to developments in its technological capacity, allow it to scoop up personal
information and the content of personal communications on an unprecedented
scale. Media reports based on revelations by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor
Edward Snowden have recently shed light on many of these program s. They have
revealed, for example, that the US collects vast quantities of informationknown as metadataabout phone calls
made to, from, and within the US.
times acknowledged the need for reform. However, it has taken few meaningful
steps in that direction. On the contrary, the USparticularly the intelligence communityhas forcefully
defended the surveillance programs as essential to protecting US national security. In a world of constantly shifting
global threats, officials argue that the US simply cannot know in advance which global communications may be
relevant to its intelligence activities, and that as a result, it needs the authority to collect and monitor a broad
swath of communications. In our interviews with them, US officials argued that the programs are effective, plugging
operational gaps that used to exist, and providing the US with valuable intelligence. They also insisted the programs
are lawful and subject to rigorous and multi-layered oversight, as well as rules about how the information obtained
through them is used. The government has emphasized that it does not use the information gleaned from these
that are in the process of expanding their surveillance capabilities. It also damages US credibility in advocating
internationally for internet freedom, which the US has listed as an important foreign policy objective since at least
And, these privacy violations are more dangerous than any risk
of terrorism, which is magnified by the fact that surveillance
fails to prevent attacks.
Schneier, 2014
Bruce Schneier a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
Law School, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Advisory
Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the CTO at Resilient
Systems, Inc.,1-6-2014, "Essays: How the NSA Threatens National Security,"
Schneier On Security,
https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2014/01/how_the_nsa_threaten.html
We have no evidence that any of this surveillance makes us safer . NSA Director General
Keith Alexander responded to these stories in June by claiming that he disrupted 54 terrorist plots. In October, he
costs, as country after country learns of our surveillance programs against their citizens. I'm also talking about the
It breaks so much of what our society has built. It breaks our political
systems, as Congress is unable to provide any meaningful oversight and citizens are kept in the dark about what
government does. It breaks our legal systems, as laws are ignored or reinterpreted, and people are unable
to challenge government actions in court . It breaks our commercial systems, as U.S. computer
cost to our society.
products and services are no longer trusted worldwide. It breaks our technical systems, as the very protocols of the
problem. Recent history illustrates many episodes where this information was, or would have been, abused: Hoover
and his FBI spying, McCarthy, Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, anti-war Vietnam protesters, and
more recentlythe Occupy movement. Outside the U.S., there are even more extreme examples .
Building
the surveillance state makes it too easy for people and organizations to slip over the
line into abuse.
PoKempne 2014,
Dinah, General Counsel at Human Rights Watch, The Right Whose Time Has Come
(Again): Privacy in the Age of Surveillance 1/21/14 http://www.hrw.org/worldreport/2014/essays/privacy-in-age-of-surveillance
Technology has invaded the sacred precincts of private life, and unwarranted
exposure has imperiled our security, dignity, and most basic values. The law must
rise to the occasion and protect our rights. Does this sound familiar? So argued Samuel
Warren and Louis Brandeis in their 1890 Harvard Law Review article announcing
The Right to Privacy. We are again at such a juncture . The technological developments they
saw as menacingphotography and the rise of the mass circulation pressappear rather quaint to us now. But the
harms to emotional, psychological, and even physical security from unwanted exposure seem just as vivid in our
digital age.Our
In a world where we share our lives on social media and trade immense amounts of personal
information for the ease and convenience of online living, some have questioned whether privacy is
a relevant concept. It is not just relevant, but crucial.
Indeed, privacy is a gateway right that affects our ability to exercise almost every
other right, not least our freedom to speak and associate with those we choose,
make political choices, practice our religious beliefs, seek medical help, access
education, figure out whom we love, and create our family life. It is nothing less
than the shelter in which we work out what we think and who we are; a fulcrum of
our autonomy as individuals.
The importance of privacy, a right we often take for granted, was thrown into sharp relief in
2013 by the steady stream of revelations from United States government files released by former National
Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, and published in the Guardian and other major newspapers
around the world. These revelations, supported by highly classified documents, showed the US, the UK,
and other governments engaged in global indiscriminate data interception, largely
unchecked by any meaningful legal constraint or oversight, without regard for the
rights of millions of people who were not suspected of wrongdoing.
Haggerty, 2015
Kevin D. Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta, Whats
Wrong with Privacy Protections? in A World Without Privacy: What Law Can and
Should Do? Edited by Austin Sarat p. 230
emphasis on the threat of authoritarian forms of rule
inherent in populations open to detailed institutional scrutiny will be portrayed as overblown
and over dramatic, suggesting I veer towards the lunatic fringe of unhinged conspiracy theorists.66 But one
does not have to believe secret forces are operating behind the scenes to recognize that
our declining private realm presents alarming dangers . Someone as conservative and deeply
embedded in the security establishment as William Binney a former NSA senior executive
says the security surveillance infrastructure he helped build now puts us on the
verge of turnkey totalitarianism.67 The contemporary expansion of surveillance ,
where monitoring becomes an ever-more routine part of our lives, represents a tremendous shift in
the balance of power between citizens and organizations. Perhaps the greatest danger
of this situation is how our existing surveillance practices can be turned to oppressive uses.
From this point forward our expanding surveillance infrastructure stands as a resource to
be inherited by future generations of politicians, corporate actors, or even messianic leaders.
Given sufficient political will this surveillance infrastructure can be re-purposed to monitor
in unparalleled detail people who some might see as undesirable due to their political opinions,
religion, skin color, gender, birthplace, physical abilities, medical history, or any
number of an almost limitless list of factors used to pit people against one another . The
twentieth century provides notorious examples of such repressive uses of
surveillance. Crucially, those tyrannical states exercised fine-grained political control by
relying on surveillance infrastructures that today seem laughably rudimentary,
comprised as they were of paper files, index cards, and elementary telephone tapping.68 It is no more
alarmist to acknowledge such risks are germane to our own societies than it is to
recognize the future will see wars, terrorist attacks, or environmental disasters
events that could themselves prompt surveillance structures to be re-calibrated towards
more coercive ends. Those who think this massive surveillance infrastructure will
not, in the fullness of time, be turned to repressive purposes are either innocent as to the realities of
power, or whistling past a graveyard. But one does not have to dwell on the most extreme possibilities to
Still others will say I am being alarmist. My
Elliot D. Ph.D., ethicist and political analyst. He is the editor in chief of the
International Journal of Applied Philosophy, Technology of Oppression: Preserving
Freedom and Dignity in an Age of Mass, Warrantless Surveillance.. DOI:
10.1057/9781137408211.0011.
the exceptional disruption of privacy for legitimate state reasons cannot and should
not be mistaken for a usual and customary rule of mass invasion of people's private
lives without their informed consent. Benjamin Franklin wisely and succinctly
expressed the point: "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor
do they deserve, either one." In relinquishing our privacy to government, we also
lose the freedom to control, and act on, our personal information, which is what
defines us individually, and collectively, as free agents and a free nation. In a world
devoid of freedom to control who we are, proclaiming that we are "secure" is an
empty platitude.
Economy
the American economyand on consumers in particularhas unwelcome echoes. A decade ago American
consumers borrowed heavily and recklessly. They filled their ever-larger houses with goods from China; they fuelled
gas-guzzling cars with imported oil. Big exporters recycled their earnings back to America, pushing down interest
rates which in turn helped to feed further borrowing. Europe was not that different. There, frugal Germans financed
debt binges around the euro areas periphery.After the financial crisis, the hope was of an end to these imbalances.
Debt-addicted Americans and Spaniards would chip away at their obligations; thrifty German and Chinese
consumers would start to enjoy life for once. At first, this seemed to be happening. Americas trade deficit, which
was about 6% of GDP in 2006, had more than halved by 2009.
some nasty habits. Hair grows faster than the euro zone, and what growth there is
depends heavily on exports. The countries of the single currency are running a
current-account surplus of about 2.6% of GDP, thanks largely to exports to America.
At 7.4% of GDP, Germanys trade surplus is as large as it has ever been. Chinas
growth, meanwhile, is slowingand once again relying heavily on spending
elsewhere. It notched up its own record trade surplus in January. Chinas exports have actually begun to drop,
but imports are down by more. And over the past year the renminbi, which rose by more than 10% against the
dollar in 2010-13, has begun slipping again, to the annoyance of American politicians. A mericas
economy is
warping as a result. Consumptions contribution to growth in the fourth quarter of
2014 was the largest since 2006. The trade deficit is widening. Strip out oil, and Americas trade deficit
grew to more than 3% of GDP in 2014, and is approaching its pre-recession peak of about 4%. The worlds
reliance on America is likely to deepen. Germans are more interested in shipping savings abroad
than investing at home (see article). Households and firms in Europes periphery are overburdened with debt,
workers wages squeezed and banks in no mood to lend. Like Germany, Europe as a whole is relying on exports.
China is rebalancing, but not fast enough: services have yet to account for more than half of annual Chinese output.
German customers data to circumvent foreign servers and the information to stay on networks that would fully be
disclosures, the European Parliament adopted a report on the NSA surveillance programme in February 2014 161,
which argues that the EU should suspend bank data and Safe Harbour agreements on data privacy (voluntary data
protection standards for non-EU companies transferring EU citizens personal data to the US) with the United States.
MEPs added that the European Parliament should only give its consent to the EU-US free trade deal (TTIP) that is
advocated the creation of a European data cloud that would require all data from European consumers to be
stored or processed within Europe, or even within the individual country of the consumer concerned.
Some
nations, such as Australia, France, South Korea, and India, have already
implemented a patchwork of data-localisation requirements according to two legal
scholars.162
Eric CIGI Research Fellow, Global Security & Politics, 9-19-2014, "Should the Average
Internet User in a Liberal Democracy Care About Internet Fragmentation? ," Cigi,
https://www.cigionline.org/blogs/reimagining-internet/should-average-internet-userliberal-democracy-care-about-internet-fragme
Even though your average liberal democratic Internet user wouldnt see it, at least
at the content level, the fragmentation of the Internet would matter a great deal. If
the Internet was to break apart into regional or even national blocks, there would be
large economic costs in terms of lost future potential for global GDP growth. As a
recent McKinsey & Company report illustrates, upwards of 15 to 25 percent of
Global GDP is currently determined by the movement of goods, money, people and
data. These global flows (which admittedly include more than just data flows)
contribute yearly between 250 to 400 billion dollars to global GDP growth. The
contribution of global flows to global GDP growth is only likely to grow in the future,
provided that the Internet remains a functionally universal system that works
extraordinarily well as a platform for e-commerce. Missing out on lost GDP growth
harms people economically in liberal democratic countries and elsewhere. Average
users in the liberal democracies should care, therefore, about the fragmentation of
the broader Internet because it will cost them dollars and cents, even if the
fragmentation of the Internet would not really affect the content that they
themselves access.Additionally, the same Mckinsey & Company report notes that
countries that are well connected to the global system have GDP growth that is up
to 40 percent higher than those countries that have fewer connections to the wider
world. Like interest rates, annual GDP growth compounds itself, meaning that early
gains grow exponentially. If the non-Western portions of the Internet wall
themselves off from the rest (or even if parts of what we could call the liberal
democratic Internet do the same), the result over the long term will be slower
growth and a smaller GDP per capita in less well-connected nations. Some people
might look at this situation and be convinced that excluding people in non-liberal
democracies from the economic potential of the Internet is not right. In normative
terms, these people might deserve to be connected, at the very least so that they
can benefit from the same economic boon as those in more well connected
advanced liberal democracies. In other words, average Internet users in liberal
democracies should care about Internet fragmentation because it is essentially an
issue of equality of opportunity.Other people might only be convinced by the idea
that poverty, inequality, and relative deprivation, while by no means sufficient
causes of terrorism, insurgency, aggression and unrest, are likely to contribute to
the potential for an increasingly conflictual world. Most average Internet users in
Liberal democracies would likely agree that preventing flashes of unrest (like the
current ISIL conflict in Iraq and Syria) is better than having to expend blood and
treasure to try and fix them after they have broken out. Preventive measures can
include ensuring solid GDP growth through global interconnection in every country,
even if this is not, as I mentioned before, going to be enough to fix every problem
every time. Overall, the dangers of a fragmented Internet are real and the average
user in liberal democracies should care. With truly global forces at play, it is
daunting to think of what the average user might do to combat fragmentation.
Really only one step is realistic. Users need to recognize that the system works best
and contributes most to the content and material well-being of all Internet users
when it approaches its ideal technical design of universal interoperability. Societies
will rightly determine that some things need to be walled off, blocked or filtered
because this digital content has physical world implications that are not acceptable
(child pornography, vitriolic hate speech, death threats, underage bullying on social
media, etc.). However, in general, citizens should resist Internet fragmentation
efforts in any form by putting pressure on their national politicians, Internet Service
Providers, and content intermediaries, like Google, to respect the fundamental (and
fundamentally beneficial) universally interoperable structure of the Internet. To do
otherwise is to accept the loss of potential future global prosperity and to encourage
a world that is unequal and prone to conflict and hardship.
Geo-politics is intruding
into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian banks were trying to acquire assets
political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates in his new book on the Dollar Trap.
in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance.
Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to
build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to create a new credit
The next
stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be directed to national
advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful)
rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based) agencies.
part of the pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more
powerfully applied to countries that are deeply embedded in the world economy. The test is in the Western
imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putins calculation in response is
that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious about the financial war. It would turn into
a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and complex financial markets of Europe and
remarkably with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of
The idea of
network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win
at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others
Mutually Assured Destruction left no doubt that any superpower conflict would inevitably escalate.
might, but also might not be able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in
1914, there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice, even though the game may
be fatal.
Internet Freedom
Bruce Schneier a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
Law School, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Advisory
Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the CTO at Resilient
Systems, Inc 3/2/15, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and
Control Your World. P. 106
In 2010, then secretary of state Hillary Clinton gave a speech declaring Internet freedom a
major US foreign policy goal. To this end, the US State Department funds and supports a variety of
programs worldwide, working to counter censorship, promote encryption, and enable anonymity, all designed " to
ensure that any child, born anywhere in the world, has access to the global Internet
as an open platform on which to innovate, learn, organize, and express herself free
from undue interference or censorship." This agenda has been torpedoed by the
awkward realization that the US and other democratic governments conducted the same
types of surveillance they have criticized in more repressive countries. Those
repressive countries are seizing on the opportunity, pointing to US surveillance as a
justification for their own more draconian Internet policies: more surveillance, more
censorship, and a more isolationist Internet that gives individual countries more
control over what their citizens see and say . For example, one of the defenses the
government of Egypt offered for its plans to monitor social media was that "the US
listens in to phone calls, and supervises anyone who could threaten its national
security." Indians are worried that their government will cite the US's actions to justify surveillance in that
country. Both China and Russia publicly called out US hypocrisy. This affects Internet freedom
worldwide. Historically, Internet governancewhat little there waswas largely left to the
United States, because everyone more or less believed that we were working for the security of the Internet
instead of against it. But now that the US has lost much of its credibility, Internet
governance is in turmoil. Many of the regulatory bodies that influence the Internet are trying to figure out
what sort of leadership model to adopt. Older international standards organizations like the International
Telecommunications Union are trying to increase their influence in Internet governance and develop a more
Deibert identifies
Corporate Enemies of the Internet. Hacking Team, an Italian firm mentioned in the RSF report, is just one
example: The Guardian reports that leaked internal documents suggest Hacking Teams clients include the
governments of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
in a world where Big Brother and Big Data share so many of the
same needs, the political economy of cybersecurity must be singled out as a major
driver of resurgent authoritarianism in cyberspace. Given these powerful forces, it will be
Deibert writes that
difficult to reverse the authoritarian surge in cyberspace. Deibert offers some possible solutions: for starters, he
writes that the political economy of cybersecurity can be altered through stronger export controls, smart
sanctions, and a monitoring system to detect abuses. Further, he recommends that cybersecurity trade fairs open
their doors to civil society watchdogs who can help hold governments and the private sector accountable. Similarly,
Deibert suggests that opening regional cybersecurity initiatives to civil society participation could mitigate
violations of user rights. This might seem unlikely to occur within some authoritarian-led intergovernmental
organizations, but setting a normative expectation of civil society participation might help discredit the efforts of
Nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on
Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered . Most of these new and
unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or
absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that
govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another.
They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders.
Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and
they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor
terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use
on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal
authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones.
obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights,
democracies are
security and
1AC Plan
Plan: The United States federal government should limit the
scope of its domestic surveillance under Section 702 of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to communications whose
sender or recipient is a valid intelligence target and whose
targets pose a tangible threat to national security.
Solvency
1AC Solvency
The plan solves, limiting the purposes of 702 collection to a
tangible threat to national security is critical to solve
overcollection.
Sinha, 2014
G. Alex Sinha is an Aryeh Neier fellow with the US Program at Human Rights Watch
and the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, July 2014
With Liberty to Monitor All How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism,
Law, and American Democracy Human Rights Watch,
http://www.hrw.org/node/127364
Narrow the purposes for which all foreign intelligence surveillance may be
conducted and limit such surveillance to individuals, groups, or entities who pose a
tangible threat to national security or a comparable state interest. o Among other steps, Congress
should pass legislation amending Section 702 of FISA and related surveillance authorities to
narrow the scope of what can be acquired as foreign intelligence information,
which is now defined broadly to encompass, among other things, information related to
the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States. It should be restricted to what is
necessary and proportionate to protect legitimate aims identified in the ICCPR, such as national security. In
practice,
this should mean that the government may acquire information only from
individuals, groups, or entities who pose a tangible threat to national security
narrowly defined, or a comparable compelling state interest.
Jake, CDTs Fellow on Privacy, Surveillance, and Security. Previously served as a law
clerk for Senator Al Franken on the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the
Law, and as a policy fellow for Senator Robert Menendez. "Why Average Internet
Users Should Demand Significant Section 702 Reform," Center For Democracy
& Technology., 7-22-2014, https://cdt.org/blog/why-average-internet-usersshould-demand-significant-section-702-reform/
There are sensible reforms that can significant limit the
collateral damage to privacy caused by Section 702 without impeding national
security. Limiting the purposes for which Section 702 can be conducted will narrow
the degree to which communications are monitored between individuals not
suspected of wrongdoing or connected to national security threats . Closing retention
loopholes present in the Minimization Guidelines governing that surveillance will ensure that when
Americans communications are incidentally collected, they are not kept absent
national security needs. And closing the backdoor search loophole would ensure
that when Americans communications are retained because they communicated
with a target of Section 702 surveillance, they couldnt be searched unless the
standards for domestic surveillance of the American are met.
Where Do We Go From Here?
communications that are to or from a foreign intelligence target, but also communications that are about the
target because they mention an identifier associated with the target.17 The practice directs the focus of
surveillance away from suspected wrongdoers and permits the NSA to target communications between individuals
government to target the communications of persons reasonably believed to be abroad, but it never defines the
term target. However, throughout Section 702, the term is used to refer to the targeting of an individual rather
content of a communication.18 Further, the entire congressional debate on Section 702 includes no reference to
collecting communications about a foreign target, and significant debate about collecting communications to or
As a result, the NSA has the capability to search any Internet communication going into or out of the U.S.22 without
results in the collection of multi-communication transactions, (MCTs) which include tens of thousands wholly
domestic communications each year.23 The FISC required creation of new minimization rules for MCTs in 2011, but
did not limit their collection.24 The mass searching of communications content inside the United States, knowing
that it the communications searched include tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications each year,
The United States should also pivot from its defensive position and take the lead on
global privacy. The United States has an impressive array of privacy safeguards, and it has even imposed new
ones that protect citizens of every country. Despite their weaknesses, these safeguards are still
the strongest in the world. The U.S. government should not be shy about trumpeting
them, and should urge other countries to follow its lead. It could begin by engaging
with close allies, like the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries,
urging them to increase transparency and judicial supervision of their own
communications surveillance activities.
to seek intrusive new powers despite evidence such programs would not have prevented attacks. Prime Minister
David Cameron of Britain recently mused, Do we want to allow a means of communication between people which
we cannot read? He soon found his answer, proclaiming that for too long, we have been a passively tolerant