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Adel Longino
Kelsey Flint-Martin
ENGL 102-049
March 30, 2016
2607
The Battle for Privacy
To What Extent Do NSA Data Seizures Affect Liberties Established by the Fourth Amendment?
In the wake of 9/11, security has become a concern for many American citizens; a
concern that the NSA has been tasked with managing. The National Security Agency, or NSA, is
an intelligence agency of the United States Government that is responsible for global monitoring,
collection, and processing of information and data related to foreign intelligence. This agency is
able to protect national security through the guise of the Patriot Act, an act passed in October of
2001. The act gives the NSA tools required to intercept and obstruct acts of terrorism through
data mining. By mining this data, the NSA is able to predict when and where acts of terrorism are
set to occur, and then implement measures to combat them. These operations are performed on
everyday citizen’s private browsing histories and both cellular and internet conversations. The
unwarranted collection of information over the US population continues, despite stipulations of
the Fourth Amendment which explicitly protect “the right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Fourth
Amendment). The relevance of this issue has risen due to Edward Snowden’s leak of government
information in 2011, regarding the NSA’s secret and illegal data mining operations (Citizenfour).
The NSA has diminished personal liberties established by the Fourth Amendment through
conducting illegal blanket seizures, monitoring virtual actions, and shrouding their actions in
secrecy; actions which rob citizens of the very privacies that the government is entrusted to
protect.
Security is a fundamental component of freedom, and is explicitly protected by the
Fourth Amendment. To understand the importance of this modern concern, it is necessary to
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explore the historical foundation on which the Fourth Amendment was established. Current
instances of privacy infringement are similar to ones that date back to 17th century Western
Europe. A close parallel can be drawn between the English Court’s Saman’s Case of 1603, and
the NSA data seizures of today. In both cases, the authority bypasses the established law of the
time, and violates an individual’s security. Saman’s Case paved the way for the Fourth
Amendment, and recognized “the right of the homeowner to defend his house against unlawful
entry even by the king’s agents in the absence of a specific warrant based on probable cause”
(Constitutionality 1). The ruling of this case is applicable in a modern setting, and highlights the
importance of probable cause in searches. Similarly, parallels can be drawn between modern
issues with the NSA and the 1705 Entick v. Carrington case. Much like the Entick case, the
NSA’s seizures of data are just as illegal, due to their seizing of material unrelated to preventing
terrorism. One such instance occurred on August 5, 2013, when the DEA “admitted to covering
up the use of information illegally obtained from the NSA” (Constitutionality 2). The DEA
launched criminal investigations of Americans based off information regarding drugs obtained
from the NSA.
The main concern for US citizens regarding the NSA, is the use of illegal blanket
seizures. These seizures do not target a specific subject, despite the Patriot Act explicitly
requiring “that records sought by the government be relevant to an authorized investigation”
(Constitutionality). The very act of blanket seizures makes it seem as though the NSA views all
citizens as suspects rather than a population that needs to be protected. President Obama’s
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) believes that seizing all phone records
“just in case” is not reasonable under any interpretation of the Constitution (Constitutionality).
Section 215 of the Patriot Act requires a statement of facts to prove the relevance of information
seized; this statute therefore does not extend to the bulk seizure of metadata (data that provides
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information on other data), since there is no evidence of wrong doings on the part of American
citizens. The FISC however rejected this argument, because “to be useful, a database has to be
broad enough to find terrorist calls” (Yoo 11). Despite this claim, the PCLOB (Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board) commented that “We have not identified a single instance involving a
threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in
the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation” (Constitutionality 1). It seems that the blanket
seizure of data not only infringes upon citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights, but also fails in
protecting citizens from acts of terrorism.
The NSA’s surveillance, ideally would only search for keywords pertaining to threats
against national security, however this does not seem to be the case. The NSA has gone so far as
to monitor all citizen’s internet browsing histories and habits, private conversations, and banking
