Johnson County Debate 2012
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UMKC Freedom Act--NEG
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Status Quo Solves
USA Freedom Act does send a sufficient anti-surveillance signal
Mascaro ‘14 Lisa Mascaro – winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She covers Congress for the LA Times. She is an
economics and political science graduate of UC Santa Barbara, she also studied in Budapest, Hungary. “House passes NSA reform bill limiting collection
of phone data” – LA Times – 5-22-14http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nsa-house-spying-20140522-story.html
Lawmakers acknowledged the bill was not perfect, but said it represented a first step in halting the dragnetstyle sweep of data disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a year ago. “The USAFreedom Act is
an important step in the right direction,” said the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary
Committee, which crafted the bill, in a joint statement after passage. They called it “the first significant rollback
of government surveillance” since the post-Watergate era. The bill seeks to end the NSA’s bulk collection of
metadata by requiring the government to make specific requests for phone or other business records. It also
requires the government to obtain a court order, except in emergency situations, before conducting
surveillance. Privacy advocates withdrew their support for the bill after changes were made in the final days
before the vote. Chief among their objections was the White House insistence on broadening the definition of
the types of searches that can be conducted. However, the advocates did not encourage a "no" vote and
vowed to seek to reinstate privacy protections as the bill heads to the Senate. “While far from perfect, this bill
is an unambiguous statement of congressional intent to rein in the out-of-control NSA, ” said Laura W.
Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office. “While we share the
concerns of many -- including members of both parties who rightly believe the bill does not go far enough -without it we would be left with no reform at all.”
Current USA Freedom Act serves as a “status quo counterplan” – it solves without hurting
counter-terror operations
Goodlatte ‘14
(Bob, US Rep, Judiciary Committee, 5/21, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/21/why-nsa-reform-bill-usa-freedom-act-is-good-for-america/)
NSA reform: Why USA FREEDOM Act is good for America Our Founding Fathers understood there could be no national security
without personal security. As such, they carefully crafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights in such a way as to accomplish these two different, yet complimentary, goals. Nearly 225
years later, some think these goals are in conflict with one another following last year’s unauthorized disclosure of the National Security Agency’s data collection programs operated under the Foreign
we don’t have to sacrifice one for the other as we seek to reform our intelligencegathering programs. We, like the Founding Fathers, can protect our cherished individual liberties while simultaneously preserving our
ability to protect against attacks on our nation and citizens. Today’s debate is similar to the debate surrounding the adoption of the Constitution. While we enjoy a Bill of Rights
Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. However,
in our Constitution today, our framers publicly and privately debated for years whether or not the Constitution needed to include a list of rights. Some advocated for the maintenance of a strong central
government in the wake of the weak Articles of Confederation, while others’ primary desire was to protect the individual freedoms of citizens. In the end, both parties were able to accommodate their
goals by adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, which enumerates liberties to be protected and enjoyed by all while preserving the federal government’s fundamental power to protect our country
both Americans’ civil liberties and our national security are at stake and
both can be protected. For the past year, the House Judiciary Committee has studied this issue in detail and has worked across party lines, and with the Obama administration, to
and citizens. As Congress seeks to reform our intelligence-gathering programs,
produce bipartisan legislation to ensure these programs protect our national security and individual freedom. This bill, the USA FREEDOM Act, was unanimously approved by both the House Judiciary
the USA FREEDOM
Act ends all bulk collection of Americans’ records, such as telephone and electronic communications records. The USA FREEDOM Act makes clear that
the government cannot indiscriminately acquire Americans’ records and creates a new process for the collection of
transactional call detail records. Specifically, the bill requires that these transactional call detail records can only be collected on a
Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and will be voted on by the House of Representatives this week. To protect Americans’ freedoms,
Johnson County Debate 2012
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case-by-case basis and only after the individual request is approved by the F oreign I ntelligence S urveillance C ourt. At the
same time, the USA FREEDOM Act ensures that the federal government continues to have the tools it needs to identify
and intercept attacks. The bill provides needed emergency authority to national security officials if there is an immediate
national security threat but still requires the government to run the request by the court within seven days. The
USA FREEDOM Act increases the transparency of our intelligence-gathering programs by creating a panel of legal experts to help ensure
the court adequately considers privacy concerns and constitutional rights of Americans when reviewing the government’s request for records. It also requires
the Attorney General to conduct a declassification review of each decision, order, or opinion of the court that includes a significant construction or interpretation of the law and mandates that the
government report the number of orders issued, modified, or denied by the court annually. Last year’s national security leaks have also had a commercial and financial impact on American technology
companies that have provided these records. They’ve experienced backlash from both American and foreign consumers and they’ve lost their competitive edge in the global marketplace. In January of this
year, the Justice Department entered into a settlement with several companies to permit new ways to report data concerning requests for customer information under FISA. The USA FREEDOM Act builds
upon this settlement, allowing tech companies to publicly report national security requests from the government to inform their American and foreign customers. The terrorist threat is real and ongoing.
We must always be cognizant of the threats we face and have the tools needed to prevent terrorist attacks. At the same time, Congress must ensure that the laws enacted protect our civil liberties. While
circumstances have changed since the days of our Founding Fathers, the principles that guide us remain. Our government, elected by the people, must provide for the common defense and simultaneously
secure the blessings of liberty now and for the generations to come.
USA Freedom solves – it allows security interests while balancing privacy concerns.
Stone ‘14
Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi distinguished service professor of law for The University of Chicago. “President Obama Is Trying
to Tame the NSA” – Daily Beast, 3/27/14 - www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/27/president-obama-is-trying-to-tame-thensa.html
President Obama announced this morning that he will propose legislation calling for significant changes in the NSA’s telephone metadata program. This
is good news, indeed. The enactment
of these proposals would strike a much better balance between the interests of
liberty and security. They would preserve the value of the NSA’s program in terms of protecting the national
security, while at the same time providing much greater, and much needed, protection to individual privacy and civil liberties.
The proposals are based on recommendations made by the president’s five-member Review Group, of which I was a member. To understand why we
came up with these suggestions, it is necessary first to understand how the program operates. Under the telephone metadata program, which was
created in 2006, telephone service companies like Sprint, Verizon and AT&T are required to turn over to the NSA, on an ongoing daily basis, huge
quantities of telephone metadata involving the phone records of millions of Americans, none of whom are themselves suspected of anything. The
metadata at issue includes information about phone numbers (both called and received), but it does not include any information about the content of
the calls or the identities of the participants. Once the NSA has the metadata in its system, it retains it for five years, before destroying it on a rolling
basis. Under
rules governing the program, the NSA is authorized to access the telephone data whenever its own
analysts find that there are facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion (“RAS”) that a particular telephone
number (usually outside the United States) is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. In 2012, the last year for which there
is complete data, the NSA “queried” 288 phone numbers, known as “seeds,” each of which was certified by NSA analysts to meet the RAS standard.
When a seed phone number is queried, the NSA derives from the database a list of every telephone number that either called or was called by the seed
phone number in the past five years. This is known as the “first hop.” For example, if the seed phone number was in contact with 100 different phone
numbers in the past five years, the NSA would obtain a list of those 100 phone numbers. The NSA then seeks to determine whether there is reason to
believe that any of those 100 numbers are also associated with a foreign terrorist organization. If so, the query has uncovered a possible connection to a
potential terrorist network that merits further investigation. Conversely, if none of the 100 numbers is believed to be associated with possible terrorist
activity, there is less reason to be concerned that the potential terrorist is in contact with co-conspirators inside the United States. In most cases, the NSA
makes a second “hop.” That is, it queries the database to obtain a list of every phone number that called or was called by the 100 numbers it obtained in
the first hop. Thus, if we assume that the average telephone number calls or is called by 100 phone numbers over the course of a five-year period, then
the second hop will produce a list of 10,000 phone numbers (100 x 100) that are two steps away from the seed number that is reasonably believed to be
associated with a foreign terrorist organization. If any of those 10,000 phone numbers is also thought to be associated with a terrorist organization, that
too is potentially useful information. In 2012, the NSA’s 288 queries resulted in a total of twelve “tips” to the FBI that called for
further investigation. Although this information has sometimes proved useful, there has been no instance in which the information obtained through this
program has directly prevented a planned terrorist attack. At the same time, though, it
is certainly possible to imagine a situation in
which the program might produce highly valuable information that would, in fact, help prevent such an attack. Our
Review Group was appointed by the president last August to advise him on these and related issues. I am pleased—indeed, delighted—to report that the
proposed legislation tracks almost perfectly the Review Group’s recommendations. As the president’s proposed legislation suggests, three specific
changes in the telephone metadata program are necessary. First, the NSA will no longer itself hold the vast store of
telephone metadata. This is essential, because one of the most serious concerns about this program is that, in the
wrong hands, access to this information can wreak havoc on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans. Even though the
program to-date has functioned properly, history teaches that there is always the risk of another J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is essential to limit
the potential for abuse. As the Review Group recommended, the proposed legislation would leave all the metadata in the hands of the private telephone
companies, rather than allowing the government itself to collect and store it in bulk. This is a critical safeguard. Second, when the government wants to
access the metadata, the proposed legislation would require the NSA to obtain an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, rather than
Johnson County Debate 2012
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being able to access the information whenever NSA analysts decide that RAS exists. It has long been understood that when government officials who are
engaged in the enterprise of ferreting out criminals are given the authority to decide for themselves when to act, their judgment is likely to be affected
by their own priorities. For that reason, it is essential for a neutral and detached judge to make the decision whether any particular query is warranted.
Third, instead of requiring the metadata to be retained for five years,
the president’s proposed legislation would compel the
telephone companies to hold the data for only 18 months. This makes great sense both because the older data
is less likely to be useful and because, by limiting the amount of data available, the risks of abuse are limited as
well. The president should be applauded for supporting these reforms. I can say that it was not at all obvious or inevitable that
the White House would come to this point. During the course of the Review Group’s deliberations with the White House, serious opposition was
raised to these recommendations. It is to the great credit of President Obama and to his senior advisers in the White House
that we now have the opportunity to take this critical step forward.
Current USA Freedom Act solves without compromising security.
Dilanian ‘14
(Ken, intelligence and national security reporter @ LA Times, LA Times, 3/26, lexis)
Obama plan for NSA is widely praised ; Many in Congress cheer the compromise on domestic spying. But a long
approval process lies ahead. President Obama's new plan
for the National Security Agency would significantly curb its
authority , ending its vast collection of Americans' telephone records, but at the same time give the spy agency
access to millions of cellphone records it currently does not reach. The compromise, which would require
Congress' approval, won praise Tuesday from prominent lawmakers, including leading defenders and critics of
the agency. But it faces a lengthy legislative process during which the agency will continue to collect and store the records of millions of U.S.
telephone calls. At a news conference in The Hague, where he took part in a world meeting on nuclear security, Obama said the Justice Department and
intelligence agencies had given him "an option that I think is workable" and that "addresses the two core concerns that people
have" about the most controversial surveillance program revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The first concern, Obama said, was that the government not control a vast archive of U.S. telephone call data.
Currently, the NSA collects records of virtually all land-line telephone calls in the U.S. and stores them for five years. Under the administration
proposal, the government would no longer keep that archive. Instead, all telephone companies, including cellphone
providers, would be required to keep call records for 18 months, the current industry standard. The second concern, Obama said,
was that the NSA be allowed to search only those phone records under a specific court order . Previously, a
blanket court order required telephone companies to turn call records over to the NSA, but no judge scrutinized analysts'
decisions about which numbers to look at. In February, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved Obama's request to require judicial approval
for each search. The
new proposal would write that requirement into law , with an exception for emergencies.
U.S. intelligence agencies have to "win back the trust, not just of governments but more importantly of ordinary citizens" around the
world, Obama said. Doing so is "not going to happen overnight because I think that there's a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical,
in particular, of U.S. intelligence services," he added. The new plan should help make Americans more comfortable with the surveillance program, he
said. Obama repeated his belief that "some of the reporting here in Europe, as well as the United States, frankly, has been pretty sensationalized," and
he said that U.S. intelligence analysts had exercised their authority judiciously. But such power could be abused in the future, he said. "The fears about
our privacy in this age of the Internet and big data are justified," he said. The NSA does not obtain the contents of communications under the telephone
program. But the ability to map a person's communications with times, dates and the numbers called can provide a window into someone's activities and
connections. Snowden's disclosures to journalists made the existence of the program public in June. It was the first of a stream of stories that have
revealed some of the government's most sensitive electronic intelligence efforts. In a statement through his lawyers at the American Civil Liberties
Union, Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia, called Obama's proposal a "turning point." "It marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights
from the NSA and restore the public's seat at the table of government," his statement said.
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Solvency
Countries don’t model U.S. policy – it’s a myth.
Moravcsik ‘5
Andrew - Professor of Government and Director of the European Union Program at Harvard University, January 31, 2005, Newsweek,
“Dream On, America,” lexis
Not long ago, the American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans
tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address
last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's
rhetoric confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America relentlessly pursuing its narrow national interests. But the greater danger may be a
delusional Americaall evidence to the contrary, that the American Dream lives on, that America remains a model for the
world, one whose mission is to spread the word. The gulf between how Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up
-one that believes, despite
in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global
security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.
Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional
allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support
for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively. Tellingly, the anti-Bushism of the president's
first term is giving way to a more general anti-Americanism. A plurality of voters (the average is 70 percent) in each of the 21 countries surveyed by the BBC oppose sending
any troops to Iraq, including those in most of the countries that have done so. Only one third, disproportionately in the poorest and most dictatorial countries, would like to
see American values spread in their country. Says Doug Miller of GlobeScan, which conducted the BBC report: "President Bush has further isolated America from the world.
Unless the administration changes its approach, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs." Former Brazilian
president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God
bless the rest of the world." The
truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share
America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith
in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from
the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions--globalization, in a word. Countries
today have
dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have
established their own distinctive ways--none made in America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European
Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law--a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of
Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate
culture. "First we emulate," one Chinese businessman recently told the board of one U.S. multinational, "then we overtake."
Plan can’t stop US surveillance on other countries. That’s vital to credibility.
McCauley ‘13
Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Previously, while writing for Newsweek, Lauren was nominated for the 2008 GLAAD
Media Award for Digital Journalism, Common Dreams, 6-27-2013 https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/27-7
However,
the international community has reacted to the disclosures with alarm. Revelations that the NSA has been
tapping the phone and internet communications of foreign individuals and governments has spurred world
leaders to denounce the global superpower as a 'hypocrite'
and, in a number of instances, offer asylum or assistance to Snowden.¶ "The Prism-gate
affair is itself just like a prism that reveals the true face and hypocritical conduct regarding Internet security of the country concerned," said Chinese Ministry of National Defense Spokesperson, Colonel
Yang Yujun.¶ Sir Tim Berners-Lee, one of the five individuals who is credited as being a 'father of the internet' agreed telling the London Times newspaper that the 'insidious' spying by the United States
was hypocritical in light of the US government's frequent 'policing' of other states.¶ "In the Middle East, people have been given access to the Internet but they have been snooped on and then they have
been jailed," he said. "It can be easy for people in the West to say 'oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy.' But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the
Internet."¶ "It can be easy for people in the West to say 'oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy.' But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the Internet." –Sir
Tim Berners-Lee¶
The dramatic international backlash is a clear indication of the importance and severity of the leaked
information and, in the interest of insuring that these revelations are not eclipsed by more distracting headlines, below is a summary of what we know so far about the NSA's spy program.¶
Forbes columnist Andy Greenberg offers this run-down of leaked documents published so far (bolding his own):¶ The publication of Snowden’s leaks began with a top secret order from the Foreign
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) sent to Verizon on behalf of the NSA, demanding the cell phone records of all of Verizon Business Network Services’ American customers for the three month period
ending in July. [...]¶ In a congressional hearing, NSA director Keith Alexander argued that the kind of surveillance of Americans’ data revealed in that Verizon order was necessary to for archiving purposes,
but was rarely accessed and only with strict oversight from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges. But another secret document published by the Guardian revealed the NSA’s own rules for when it
makes broad exceptions to its foreign vs. U.S. persons distinction, accessing Americans’ data and holding onto it indefinitely. [...]¶ Another leaked slide deck revealed a software tool called Boundless
Informant, which the NSA appears to use for tracking the origin of data it collects. The leaked materials included a map produced by the program showing the frequency of data collection in countries
around the world. While Iran, Pakistan and Jordan appeared to be the most surveilled countries according to the map, it also pointed to significant data collection from the United States.¶ A leaked
executive order from President Obama shows the administration asked intelligence agencies to draw up a list of potential offensive cyberattack targets around the world. The order, which suggests
targeting “systems, processes and infrastructure” states that such offensive hacking operations “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with
little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.” [...]¶ Documents leaked to the Guardian revealed a five-year-old British intelligence
scheme to tap transatlantic fiberoptic cables to gather data. A program known as Tempora, created by the U.K.’s NSA equivalent Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has for the last 18
months been able to store huge amounts of that raw data for up to 30 days. Much of the data is shared with the NSA. [...]¶ Another GCHQ project revealed to the Guardian through leaked documents
intercepted the communications of delegates to the G20 summit of world leaders in London in 2009. [...]¶ Snowden showed the Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post documents that it
said outlined extensive hacking of Chinese and Hong Kong targets by the NSA since 2009, with 61,000 targets globally and “hundreds” in China. [...]¶ The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald has said that
Snowden provided him “thousands” of documents, of which “dozens” are newsworthy. And Snowden himself has said he’d like to expose his trove of leaks to the global media so that each country’s
reporters can decide whether “U.S. network operations against their people should be published.” So regardless of where Snowden ends up, expect more of his revelations to follow.¶ Further, on Thursday
journalists Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman revealed in a new Guardian exclusive that for ten years the US had conducted bulk collections of internet metadata, amassing information akin to
'reading one's diary' on both domestic and foreign individuals.¶ And, in their own cataloging of 'what we know so far,' Pro Publica poses the question, "Is all of this legal?"¶ Recently leaked court orders
reveal how the Department of Justice, "through a series of legislative changes and court decisions," have evolved the parameters of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, enabling
the expansive spy program.¶ They write:¶ By definition, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decides what it is legal for the NSA to do.¶ But this level of domestic surveillance wasn’t always legal,
and the NSA has been found to violate legal standards on more than one occasion. Although the NSA’s broad data collection programs appear to have started shortly after September 11, 2001, the NSA
was gradually granted authority to collect domestic information on this scale through a series of legislative changes and court decisions over the next decade. See this timeline of loosening laws. The
Director of National Intelligence says that authority for PRISM programs comes from section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Verizon metadata collection order cites section 215 of
the Patriot Act. The author of the Patriot Act disagrees that the act justifies the Verizon metadata collection program.¶ In March 2004, acting Attorney General James Comey ordered a stop to some parts
of the secret domestic surveillance programs, but President Bush signed an order re-authorizing it anyway. In response, several top Justice Department officials threatened to resign, including Comey and
FBI director Robert Mueller. Bush backed down, and the programs were at least partially suspended for several months.¶ In 2009, the Justice Department acknowledged that the NSA had collected emails
and phone calls of Americans in a way that exceeded legal limitations.¶ In October 2011, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment at least once. The
Justice Department has said that this ruling must remain secret, but we know it concerned some aspect of the "minimization" rules the govern what the NSA can do with domestic communications. The
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recently decided that this ruling can be released, but Justice Department has not yet done so.¶ Civil liberties groups including the EFF and the ACLU dispute the
constitutionality of these programs and have filed lawsuits to challenge them.¶ And regarding the aforementioned international backlash, Pro Publica responds to the question "What if I'm not
There do not appear to be any legal restrictions on what the NSA can do with the
communications of non-U.S. persons. Since a substantial fraction of the world’s Internet data passes through the United States, or its allies, the U.S. has the ability to observe
and record the communications of much of the world’s population. The European Union has already complained to the U.S.
American?"¶ All bets are off.
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Johnson County Debate 2012
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Human Rights Credibility Negative
Human Rights watch agrees the status quo is sufficient to solve for Human Rights Credibility
HRW ‘15
Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity
and advance the cause of human rights for all. “Strengthen the USA Freedom Act” - May 19, 2015 http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/19/strengthen-usa-freedom-act
As the Senate considers the USA Freedom Act this week, policymakers should strengthen it by limiting large-scale collection of records and reinforcing transparency and
carrying court reforms further. The Senate should also take care not to weaken the bill, and should reject any amendments
that would require companies to retain personal data for longer than is necessary for business purposes. It has been two years since the National Security Agency (NSA)
whistleblower Edward Snowden unleashed a steady stream of documents that exposed the intention by the United States and the United Kingdom to “collect it all” in the
digital age. These revelations demonstrate how unchecked surveillance can metastasize and undermine democratic institutions if intelligence agencies are allowed to operate
in the shadows, without robust legal limits and oversight.
On May 13 , the US House of Representatives approved the USA Freedom Act of
2015 by a substantial margin. The bill represents the latest attempt by Congress to rein in one of the surveillance programs Snowden disclosed—the NSA’s domestic bulk
phone metadata collection under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The House vote followed a major rebuke to the US government by the US Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit, which ruled on May 7 that the NSA’s potentially nationwide dragnet collection of phone records under Section 215 was unlawful. Section 215 is set to expire on June 1
unless Congress acts to extend it or to preserve specific powers authorized under the provision, which go beyond collection of phone records. Surveillance reforms are long
overdue and can be accomplished while protecting US citizens from serious security threats. Congress and the Obama administration should end all mass surveillance
programs, which unnecessarily and disproportionately intrude on the privacy of hundreds of millions of people who are not linked to wrongdoing. But reforming US laws and
reversing an increasingly global tide of mass surveillance will not be easy. Many of the programs Snowden revealed are already deeply entrenched, with billions of dollars of
infrastructure, contracts, and personnel invested. Technological capacity to vacuum up the world’s communications has outpaced existing legal frameworks meant to protect
privacy. The Second Circuit opinion represents an improvement over current law because it establishes that domestic bulk collection of phone metadata under Section 215 of
the Patriot Act cannot continue. Section 215 allows the government to collect business records, including phone records, that are “relevant” to an authorized investigation.
The court ruled that the notion of “relevance” could not be stretched to allow intelligence agencies to gather all phone records in the US. However, the opinion could be
overturned and two other appeals courts are also considering the legality of the NSA’s bulk phone records program. The opinion also does not address US surveillance of
people not in the US. Nor does it question the underlying assumption that the US owes no privacy obligations to people outside its territory, which makes no sense in the
digital age and is inconsistent with human rights law requirements. Even if the Second Circuit opinion remains good law, congressional action will be necessary to address
surveillance programs other than Section 215—both domestic and those affecting people outside the US—and to create more robust institutional safeguards to prevent future
abuses. The courts cannot bring about reforms to increase oversight and improve institutional oversight on their own. Human
Rights Watch has supported
the USA Freedom Act because it is a modest, if incomplete, first step down the long road to reining in the NSA excesses. Beyond ending
bulk records collection, the bill would begin to reform the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which oversees NSA surveillance, and would introduce new
transparency measures to improve oversight. In passing the bill, the House of Representatives also clarified that it intends the bill to be consistent with the Second Circuit’s
ruling, so as to not weaken its findings. The bill is no panacea and, as detailed below, would not ensure comprehensive reform. It still
leaves open the possibility of large-scale data collection practices in the US under the Patriot Act. It does not constrain surveillance under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments
Act nor Executive Order 12333, the primary legal authorities the government has used to justify mass surveillance of people outside US borders. And the bill does not address
many modern surveillance capabilities, from mass cable tapping to use of malware, intercepting all mobile calls in a country, and compromising the security of mobile SIM
cards and other equipment and services.
Nonetheless, passing a strong USA Freedom Act would be a long-overdue step in the right
direction. It would show that Congress is willing and able to act to protect privacy and impose oversight over intelligence
agencies in an age when technology makes ubiquitous surveillance possible. Passing
this bill would
also help
shift the debate in the US
and globally and would distance the United States from other countries that seek to make mass surveillance
the norm. On a global level, other governments may already be emulating the NSA’s approach, fueling an environment of
impunity for mass violations of privacy. In the last year, France, Turkey, Russia, and other countries have passed
legislation to facilitate or expand large-scale surveillance. If the USA Freedom Act passes, it would be the first
time Congress has affirmatively restrained NSA activities since the attacks of September 11. Key supporters of the bill have
vowed to take up reforms to other laws next, including Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
Johnson County Debate 2012
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AT: Democracy Scenario
Internet freedom is not a silver bullet solution for human rights and democracy.
Wadhwa ‘13
Tarun Wadhwa is a researcher with the Hybrid Reality Institute. Formerly, he was a Research Fellow at Singularity University and a
Senior Research Associate with the Think India Foundation. He is also the author of the book: Identified: Why They Are Getting To Know
Everything About Us – which is about the global rise of digital identification systems. He holds a BA in Political Science from George
Washington University and EPD11 from Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program in Policy, Law and Ethics - “NSA Surveillance
May Have Dealt Major Blow To Global Internet Freedom Efforts” - Forbes – 6-13-13 http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2013/06/13/with-nsa-surveillance-us-government-may-have-dealt-major-blow-to-globalinternet-freedom-efforts/
The internet has never been a perfect tool for advancing democracy and human rights . Despite the most
optimistic techno-utopian projections, the internet has yet to set us free and rid the world of dictators. Critics
have been right to warn us of the dangers of a single-minded approach — we should be careful not to overlook the
deep historical, economic, and cultural factors that shape the world we live in today. At the same time, it is true that the
internet has revolutionized the way we are able to connect with each other. We are no longer limited to our culture and geography, we can now unite around shared interests
and values.
Democracy doesn’t cause peace – statistical models are wrong.
Mousseau, 12
(Michael – Professor IR Koç University, “The Democratic Peace Unraveled: It’s the Economy” International Studies Quarterly, p 1-12)
Model 2 presents new knowledge by adding the control for economic type. To capture the dyadic expectation of peace among contract-intensive nations, the variable Contract- intensive EconomyL (CIEL)
indicates the value of impersonal contracts in force per capita of the state with the lower level of CIE in the dyad; a high value of this measure indicates both states have contract-intensive economies. As
can be seen, the coefficient for CIEL ()0.80) is negative and highly significant. This corroborates that impersonal economy is a highly robust force for peace. The coefficient for DemocracyL is now at zero.
There are no other differences between Models 1 and 2, whose samples are identical, and no prior study corroborating the democratic peace has considered contractintensive economy. Therefore, the
all prior reports of democracy as a force for peace are probably
spurious, since this result is predicted and fully accounted for by economic norms theory. CIEL and DemocracyL correlate
only in the moderate range of 0.47 (Pearson’s r), so the insignificance of democracy is not likely to be a statistical artifact of
multicollinearity. This is corroborated by the variance inflation factor for DemocracyL in Model 2 of 1.85, which is well below the usual rule-of-thumb indicator of multicollinearity of 10 or more.
standard econometric inference to be drawn from Model 2 is the nontrivial result that
Nor should readers assume most democratic dyads have both states with impersonal economies: While almost all nations with contract-intensive economies (as indicated with the binary measure for CIE)
are democratic (Polity2 > 6) (Singapore is the only long-term exception), more than half—55%—of all democratic nation-years have contract-poor economies. At the dyadic level in this sample, this
not only does Model 2 show
no evidence of causation from democracy to peace (as reported in Mousseau 2009), but it also illustrates that this absence of
democratic peace includes the vast majority—80%—of democratic dyad-years over the sample period. Nor is it likely that
the causal arrow is reversed—with democracy being the ultimate cause of contract-intensive economy and peace. This is
because correlations among independent variables are not calculated in the results of multivariate regressions: Coefficients
show only the effect of each variable after the potential effects of the others are kept constant at their mean levels. If it was
democracy that caused both impersonal economy and peace, then there would be some variance in DemocracyL
remaining, after its partial correlation with CIEL is excluded, that links it directly with peace. The positive direction of the coefficient for
DemocracyL informs us that no such direct effect exists (Blalock 1979:473–474). Model 3 tests for the effect of DemocracyL if a control is added for mixed-polity dyads,
translates to 80% of democratic dyads (all dyads where DemocracyBinary6 = 1) that have at least one state with a contract-poor economy. In other words,
as suggested by Russett (2010:201). As discussed above, to avoid problems of mathematical endogeneity, I adopt the solution used by Mousseau, Orsun and Ungerer (2013) and measure regime difference
as proposed by Werner (2000), drawing on the subcomponents of the Polity2 regime measure. As can be seen, the coefficient for Political Distance (1.00) is positive and significant, corroborating that
regime mixed dyads do indeed have more militarized conflict than others. Yet, the inclusion of this term has no effect on the results that concern us here: CIEL ()0.85) is now even more robust, and the
coefficient for DemocracyL (0.03) is above zero.7 Model 4 replaces the continuous democracy measure with the standard binary one (Polity2 > 6), as suggested by Russett (2010:201), citing Bayer and
Bernhard (2010). As can be observed, the coefficient for CIEL ()0.83) remains negative and highly significant, while DemocracyBinary6 (0.63) is in the positive (wrong) direction. As discussed above, analyses
of fatal dispute onsets with the far stricter binary measure for democracy (Polity = 10), put forward by Dafoe (2011) in response to Mousseau (2009), yields perfect prediction (as does the prior binary
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measure Both States CIE), causing quasi-complete separation and inconclusive results. Therefore, Model 5 reports the results with DemocracyBinary10 in analyses of all militarized conflicts, not just fatal
ones. As can be seen, the coefficient for DemocracyBinary10 ()0.41), while negative, is not significant. Model 6 reports the results in analyses of fatal disputes with DemocracyL squared (after adding 10),
the coefficient for DemocracyL 2 is at zero,
further corroborating that even very high levels of democracy do not appear to cause peace in analyses of fatal disputes,
once consideration is given to contractintensive economy. Models 3, 4, and 6, which include Political Distance, were repeated (but
which implies that the likelihood of conflict decreases more quickly toward the high values of DemocracyL. As can be seen ,
unreported to save space) with analyses of all militarized interstate disputes, with the democracy coefficients close to zero in every case. Therefore, the
conclusions reached by Mousseau (2009) are corroborated even with the most stringent measures of democracy, consideration of institutional distance,
and across all specifications: The democratic peace appears spurious, with contract-intensive economy being the more likely
explanation for both democracy and the democratic peace.
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AT: Economy scenario
Global econ is resilient
FSB ‘14
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system
– “FSB Plenary meets in London” – 31 March 2014 http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/press/pr_140331.htm
The global economy has been improving, and monetary policy in the US is in the early stages of a normalisation
process, after an extended period of exceptional accommodation. A comprehensive programme of regulatory reforms and
supervisory actions since the crisis has made the global financial system more resilient . Currently, European
authorities are putting in place a comprehensive set of measures to strengthen further the region's financial system. Emerging
markets have
coped relatively well to date with occasional bouts of turbulence, in part reflecting the positive impact of both past and
more recent reforms.
Economic decline doesn’t cause war
Barnett ‘9
(Thomas, Senior Strategic Researcher – Naval War College, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis”, Asset
Protection Network, 8-25, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and
commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global
economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the
past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had
virtually no impact whatsoever on the international
security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the
global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a
year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest
entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the
opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in
an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar
picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the
only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity
-- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major
interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-into-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both
leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies
across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn,
occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising
and training local forces. So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots last year in
places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-state
war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great improvement or disruption in greatpower cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing
efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that
Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its
weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in
Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to
wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus
packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political
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radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right
political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate
economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into
"trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade
agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed
by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward,
austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis
did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally,
plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between
"fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such "diverging
interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring
it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international
liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the
mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.
fantastic fear-
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A-2 Bigotry Adv.
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Utilitarianism is good
“moral absolutes” and deontological claims are violent and shouldn’t dictate public policy.
Utilitarianism is the only option.
Woller ‘97
(Gary, Economics Professor at BYU, Policy Currents, June, http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf , p. 11)
At the same time, deontologically
based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At
best, a
priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate
while failing to adequately address the
problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or
public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness
any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so.
Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are
an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and
regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits
of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation.
(There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example,
Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would,
I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The
number of values typically
involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the
consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific
policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy,
policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems
they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the
means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at
times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
Sweeping indicts on utilitarianism are wrong. Privacy can be an important utilitarian end, it
just comes second to security interests.
Himma ‘7
Kenneth - Associate Professor of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University. The author holds JD and PhD and was formerly a Lecturer at the
University of Washington in Department of Philosophy, the Information School, and the Law School. “Privacy vs. Security: Why Privacy is
Not an Absolute Value or Right”. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, p. 859, 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=994458
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Although some of these constitutional rights are deeply contested and resented by more conservative segments of the population, most people seem
to believe that we have a moral right to informational privacy— informational and reproductive privacy are analytically and substantively distinct—
that ought to be protected by the legal system. I think it is fair to say that the claim that we have such a right is, at this point in time, utterly
uncontroversial among mainstream conservatives and liberals, even if the content of this right and the nature of the appropriate legal protection—
constitutional or statutory—is contested. In this essay,
I consider the scope of this right to informational privacy relative to
our interests in security and argue, in particular, that the right to privacy must yield to these interests in the case of
a direct conflict.4 I offer arguments from a number of different perspectives. I will, for example, begin with a case directly rooted in what I take to be
ordinary case intuitions and then continue with an argument grounded in the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value, which is thought
to serve as a rough mark between what is important from a moral point of view and what is important from other points of view; though
there
can, obviously, be means to moral ends that will have moral significance in virtue of their relations to these ends. However, I will
largely be concerned with showing that the major mainstream approaches to justifying state authority presuppose or imply that security interests can
I will argue that utilitarian and contractarian justifications of state authority
entail that when privacy conflicts with the most important security interests, those security interests trump
the privacy interests. I conclude that the idea that privacy rights are absolute in the sense that they are never
justifiably infringed, which is surprisingly common, is not only counterintuitive, but lacks any general theoretical
support from any of the major mainstream theories of legitimacy.
justify infringements of privacy rights. For example,
Assessing Utilitarian consequences are good. Putting ethics in a vacuum is morally
irresponsible.
Issac, ‘2
(Jeffery, Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Dissent, Vol. 49 No. 2, Spring)
Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world one must attend to the
means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is
beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah
Arendt have taught, an unyielding
concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be
fails to see that the purity of one’s
intentions does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with
morally comprised parties may seem like the right thing, but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as
serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real
violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness, it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is
morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It
why, from the standpoint of politics-as opposed to religion-pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses
in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3)
it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended
consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most
significant. Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This
is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it
is equally important, always , to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in
pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true
believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
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Survelliance in service of Security Necessary
NSA isn’t sinister – surveillance is a far-cry from the mass privacy violations their authors
assume.
Wittes ‘13
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the
Lawfare blog, , “Five In-Your-Face Thoughts in Defense of the NSA”, Lawfare – 9/9/13 www.lawfareblog.com/2013/09/five-in-your-facethoughts-in-defense-of-the-nsa/
First, the
NSA is an intelligence agency, and intelligence agencies collect intelligence. The NSA collects a huge
amount of data. It spies on other countries and their leaders. It tries to make sense of the material it collects using dataanalytic techniques. It breaks encryption systems that its potential targets use to protect their communications. It develops
relationships with private companies that can provide it data. And it engages in activity that is illegal in the countries against which it
operates. As we used to say in grade school, “Duh!” That’s why we have a signals intelligence agency. Critics of the agency, at home and abroad, trot
out many of these facts as damning indictments. Brazil and Mexico and our European allies are outraged—or pretend to be—that we spy on them. Our domestic conversation
is laced with fear of the sheer size of NSA collection, as though data volume is what makes Big Brother big. But the criticism is silly. Of course, the agency
collects a large volume of material. An intelligence agency is not a think tank or a university. It doesn’t just read newspapers, collect what’s public and analyze what such data
say. ”We steal secrets,” former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden put it in the excellent movie about Wikileaks that used this arresting phrase as its title. This
is what
spy agencies do. The NSA is good at it—very good at it. I, for one, think that’s a great thing. Second, what the agency is actually doing is far less
threatening than what people think it is doing. The tone of the conversation about NSA activity is so over-the-top that the agency’s actual activity gets lost in the story. The
intelligence community’s own efforts to explain itself have been less than brilliant, but the truth is that the
NSA has implemented its set of broad
authorities in a tightly-controlled fashion. One can argue that the authorities in question are too broad, or one can argue that the controls should be
tighter still. But it’s hard to look at the details of the actual programmatic activity of the NSA and emerge as alarmed as one would reasonably be on reading the screaming
headlines. The disparity, and it is a vast one, between the story in those headlines and the story in the details is partly the product of a lot of shoddy journalism. But it’s partly
also a product of the technical and legal density of the subject matter. The costs of entry to the conversation about how the NSA is spying on millions of Americans is low. The
cost of entry to a serious conversation about what the agency is doing, how it is doing it, and how both interact with relevant statutory and constitutional law is not low. It’s
very high. And a great many more people—journalists, members of Congress, and members of the public—thus feel pulled to the story about an out-of-control spy agency. It’s
so much easier, and it maps so neatly onto all of the post-Watergate prejudices of our political culture. Third, while a lot of people aren’t interested in the details, those details
really matter. At the time of the last document release, Lawfare published a series of detailed posts describing what the released documents actually said (we will do the same
with this week’s disclosures). Very few people read them. Taken together, they attracted a few thousand readers, according to Google Analytics. By contrast, nearly 30,000
people read one day’s worth of our coverage of a possible Syria AUMF. The contrast gives you some idea of just how few people really want to understand what did and didn’t
happen when the FISA Court declared part of the 702 collection process deficient on statutory and constitutional grounds. Yet the number of people who feel entitled to
express an opinion—often a very strong opinion—on the same subject is much larger. The result, for the agency, is a debate that is remarkably resistant to disclosures of
information unless they come from Edward Snowden and remarkably resistant to the sort of fine-grained details on which the actual difference between legality and
lawlessness necessarily depends. This brings me to my fourth point: the NSA’s activities are legal.
We are not living in the age of COINTELPRO or
the Watergate-era intelligence scandals . We are living in an age in which the intelligence activities about
which we harbor anxieties take place pursuant to statute and subject to judicial review. People may object to
the government’s interpretation of Section 215, about which I have my own doubts, but nobody can argue that it is a lawless
or crazy interpretation of the statute; in fact, it’s on its face quite plausible. And it’s one that the courts have approved, and to which
Congress has assented. Similarly, nobody can deny that Section 702 grants sweeping collection powers with regard to communications by persons reasonably believed to be
overseas; that’s the point of the law, and it’s the reason the FISA Amendments Act was controversial as a legislative matter. Yes, there have been errors and compliance issues,
as there are with any government (or private sector) program. And yes, there was a substantial dialog with the FISA Court over one component of Section 702, in which the
court held that component unconstitutional, forced changes to it, and referred to two other incidents in which the government had misrepresented aspects of 702 collection
to the judges. But this sort of back-and-forth is little different from the iterative discussion that takes place between, say, the courts and a big city police department over the
conduct of searches or, for that matter, the discussion between any agency and the courts that review its activities. They are examples of the mechanisms Congress set up to
keep the NSA within the law doing just that.
Efforts are justified because they are key to preventing terrorism.
STEPHEN J. ELLMANN 03
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law, New York Law
School. 46 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 675 (2002-2003) Racial Profiling and Terrorism, Ellmann, Stephen J.
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Important as those contexts are, I concentrate here on domestic law enforcement.¶ Domestic law enforcement is the setting in which a national
debate¶ about racial profiling has already taken place, and I want to explore ¶ whether the consensus that racial profiling is wrong in our neighbor-¶ hoods and on our
highways holds true when the target is terrorism¶ rather than ordinary crime.18 In addition, domestic law enforcement ¶ involves the exercise of state power under the fullest
constitutional re-¶ strictions - those applicable to the government's treatment of citizens ¶ and of noncitizens already in the country. Whatever the exact dimen-¶ sions of the
plenary power over immigration,19 it is clear that those ¶ subject to it do not enjoy the same constitutional protection as those, ¶ citizens and noncitizens, who are within our
borders.20 I mean to ask,¶ in other words, whether the fullest constraints of the constitution do ¶ always forbid racial profiling as a response to terrorism.2' This is also to¶ ask
whether terrorism justifies discrimination among those people, citi-¶ zens above all, who are most fully members of our national¶ community.¶
http://www.aclu.org/news/2002/n080102b.html (last visited Sept. 12, 2002) (criticiz-¶ ing provision of Andean Trade Preference Expansion Act, passed by both Houses of ¶
Congress in July - August 2002).¶ Let me begin by restating this same question in the language of ¶ constitutional doctrine. The question then is: is profiling, on the basis ¶ of
race and/or religion, narrowly tailored or necessary to a compelling ¶ governmental interest - because under standard formulations, race¶ discrimination or religious
discrimination are not unconstitutional per ¶ se but only if the justifications for them cannot stand up under this¶ kind of strict scrutiny.22 There is in fact a Supreme Court
case, Lee v.¶ Washington,23 decided well after Brown v. Board of Education24 had ¶ sounded the death knell for de jure racial segregation in the United¶ States, in which the
Court seemed to imply that racial segregation in a ¶ prison in response to particular "necessities of prison security and dis-¶ cipline" could be constitutional - not as a normal
governmental step,¶ but as what we might call an emergency response to, say, race riots in¶ the prison.25 Racial profiling, this old case suggests, is not absolutely ¶ and
automatically forbidden. But as Brown and many other cases con-¶ firm, it is and should be extremely hard to justify. ¶ Extremely hard - but perhaps not impossible. Indeed, in
the¶ context of border patrols it has been accepted by the Supreme Court, ¶ 22. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 227 (1995). Little ¶ turns on whether
"necessity" or "close tailoring" is the formula applied, for it seems¶ implausible that a step could be considered "necessary" and yet not also be accepted as ¶ being as "closely
tailored" as could be required under the circumstances. The focus on ¶ "close tailoring," much the more common formula in recent equal protection cases,¶ certainly reminds
us that precision is an important element of necessity, see Wygant v. ¶ Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 280 (1986) (plurality opinion of Powell, J.), but it ¶ does not, I believe,
require complete precision when something less than complete¶ precision is what is genuinely necessary.¶ under the rubric of the Fourth Amendment.26 Employing the lan-¶
guage of the strict scrutiny formula, we can begin with the question of ¶ whether a "compelling governmental interest" justifies taking such ¶ steps. Now, few people have ever
doubted that ordinary law enforce-¶ ment - the day-to-day efforts by the police to prevent murders, rapes ¶ and other normal perils of our lives from taking place - represents
a¶ "compelling governmental interest."27 But the strict scrutiny formula ¶ appears to be a balancing formula, and if we take this seriously then we ¶ should surely say that
preventing terrorism presents an especially com-¶ pelling governmental interest.28 The reasons for saying this don't need¶
much elaboration, here, half a mile from what was the site of the ¶ World Trade Center. Terrorism is a danger to huge numbers of peo-¶ ple,
and perhaps to the nation itself, in a way that each individual¶ crime of violence can hardly ever be.29¶ But the
intensity of this governmental interest is not simply a mat-¶ ter of logic or popular sentiment. We are at war against terrorists and¶ their allies
who attacked us on September 11.311 Assuming (as I do) that¶ the war is constitutional even though it has never been formally de-¶ clared, and even
though it is not a war against any nation (at least since ¶ the success of our military effort in Afghanistan), it reflects a national ¶ judgment that a particular group of people
represents so grave a risk¶ to us that we must commit the nation to finding and killing them if ¶ they do not surrender. That
judgment surely puts a
special priority on¶ finding these adversaries. This is a priority even higher than our com-¶ mitment to rooting
out terrorism in general. We are not at war with¶ the domestic white racists who spawned the bombing of
the federal¶ building in Oklahoma City, as much as we may want to put a stop to¶ their activities. Nor are we at war
with, for example, the Greek group¶ known as September 21, even though this group has been responsible ¶ for a number of violent attacks over many years that we
undoubtedly¶ would like to prevent. The equal protection clause does not require us ¶ to make war against all of our adversaries; we must and we can choose ¶ priorities, and
those choices should echo in any equal protection anal-¶ ysis of the steps we take to protect ourselves against what we face.
Discrimination may be necessary.
STEPHEN J. ELLMANN 03
Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law, New York Law
School. 46 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 675 (2002-2003) Racial Profiling and Terrorism, Ellmann, Stephen J.
[ 56 pages, 675 to 730 ]
This is proof that it
is possible to avoid discrimination in security¶ measures, but it is not proof that it is wise to do
so. It may be that we¶ live in a world where someone is prepared to use his 6-year-old daugh-¶ ter in a terrorist plot; if we're not in that world yet, it may be that we¶ would
soon enter it if terrorist adults realized that 6-year-old girls were¶ getting a free pass. Random searches, and universal searches, both¶ make sense because we are far from
sure what our adversaries will look¶ like. But it isn't conceivable that 6-year-old girls pose the same threat to¶ airline security - or, to go back to my example, to the security of
New¶ York buildings - as grown men do. So if 6-year-olds are actually as¶ likely to be randomly searched as grown men are, then some substan-¶ tial amount of law
enforcement effort is being largely wasted, as far as ¶ preventing terrorist attacks is concerned.34¶ If
we cannot rely on a combination of
screening everyone to the¶ limited extent feasible while more intensively screening a few people¶ selected on
a random basis, then we need a non-random basis for¶ choosing some of the people whom we will scrutinize
more thor-¶ oughly.
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Mass surveillance good – equalizes current power imbalances. It would net decrease the
quantity of police and associated brutality. Also decreases selective enforcement and child
abuse.
Armstrong ‘13
Dr. Stuart Armstrong is the James Martin Research Fellow at Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University – “Life in the fishbowl” Aeon Magazine - September 30, 2013 http://aeon.co/magazine/society/the-strange-benefits-of-a-total-surveillance-state/
Maybe we should start preparing. And not just by wringing our hands or mounting attempts to defeat surveillance. For if there’s a chance that the
panopticon is inevitable, we ought to do some hard thinking about its positive aspects. Cataloguing the downsides of mass
surveillance is important, essential even. But we have a whole literature devoted to that. Instead, let’s explore its
potential benefits. The first, and most obvious, advantage of mass surveillance is a drastic reduction in crime. Indeed, this is the advantage most often put
forward by surveillance proponents today. The evidence as to whether current surveillance achieves this is ambiguous; cameras, for instance, seem to have an effect on
property crime, but not on incidences of violence. But today’s world is very different from a panopticon full of automatically analysed surveillance devices that leave few zones
of darkness. If calibrated properly, total surveillance
might eradicate certain types of crime
almost
entirely.
People respond well to inevitable
consequences, especially those that follow swiftly on the heels of their conduct. Few would commit easily monitored crimes such as assault or breaking and entering, if it
meant being handcuffed within minutes. This kind of ultra-efficient police capability would require not only sensors capable of recording crimes, but also advanced computer
vision and recognition algorithms capable of detecting crimes quickly. There has been some recent progress on such algorithms, with further improvements expected. In
theory, they would be able to alert the police in real time, while the crime was still ongoing. Prompt police responses would create near-perfect deterrence, and violent crime
would be reduced to a few remaining incidents of overwhelming passion or extreme irrationality. If
surveillance recordings were stored for later analysis,
other types of crimes could be eradicated as well, because perpetrators would fear later discovery and punishment. We
could expect crimes such as low-level corruption to vanish, because bribes would become perilous (to demand or receive) for those who are constantly under watch. We
would likely see a similar reduction in police brutality. There might be an initial spike in detected cases of police
brutality under a total surveillance regime, as incidents that would previously have gone unnoticed came to light, but then,
after a short while, the numbers would tumble. Ubiquitous video recording, mobile and otherwise, has already begun to
expose such incidents. On a smaller scale, mass surveillance would combat all kinds of abuses that currently go unreported
because the abuser has power over the abused. You see this dynamic in a variety of scenarios, from the dramatic
(child abuse) to the more mundane (line managers insisting on illegal, unpaid overtime). Even if the victim is too scared to report the
crime, the simple fact that the recordings existed would go a long way towards equalising existing power
differentials . There would be the constant risk of some auditor or analyst stumbling on the recording, and once
the abused was out of the abuser’s control (grown up, in another job) they could retaliate and complain, proof
in hand. The possibility of deferred vengeance would make abuse much less likely to occur in the first place.
With reduced crime, we could also expect a significant reduction in police work and, by extension, police numbers. Beyond a
rapid-reaction force tasked with responding to rare crimes of passion, there
would be no need to keep a large police force on hand.
And there would also be no need for them to enjoy the special rights they do today. Police officers can, on mere
suspicion, detain you, search your person, interrogate you, and sometimes enter your home. They can also arrest you on suspicion of
vague ‘crimes’ such as ‘loitering with intent’. Our present police force is given these powers because it needs to be able to investigate. Police officers can’t be expected to
know who committed what crime, and when, so they need extra powers to be able to figure this out, and still more special powers to protect themselves while they do so.
But in a total-surveillance world, there would be no need for humans to have such extensive powers of
investigation. For most crimes, guilt or innocence would be obvious and easy to establish from the recordings. The
police’s role could be reduced to arresting specific individuals, who have violated specific laws. If all goes well, there might be fewer laws
for the police to enforce. Most countries currently have an excess of laws, criminalising all sorts of behaviour.
This is only tolerated because of selective enforcement; the laws are enforced very rarely, or only against marginalised
groups. But if everyone was suddenly subject to enforcement, there would have to be a mass legal repeal.
When spliffs on private yachts are punished as severely as spliffs in the ghetto, you can expect the marijuana
legalisation movement to gather steam. When it becomes glaringly obvious that most people simply can’t follow all the rules they’re supposed to, these
rules will have to be reformed. In the end, there is a chance that mass surveillance could result in more personal freedom, not less.
Johnson County Debate 2012
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Politics Link
Plan’s unpopular – it gets spun as “letting the terrorists win” which erodes support – it
outweighs outside lobbying—this card is about the 2013 version of the Act.
Greenwald, 14 (Glenn Greenwald, journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law, 11-19-2014, "Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance. Here's what
Matters instead", The Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congressstopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/, DA: 5-30-2015)
The “USA Freedom Act”—which its proponents were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S.
Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic
and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean
Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted
against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the
NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill. The “debate” among the
Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP
senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally
screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point. Their scary script had been
unveiled earlier that morning by a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Bush Attorney General Mike Mukasey and former CIA and NSA Director Mike
Hayden warning that NSA reform would make the terrorists kill you; it appeared under this Onion-like headline: So the pro-NSA
Republican
senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records
of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids . But because they were speaking in an
empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle
contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s
Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult. The boredom
of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this
has been seen so many times before—in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era
that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough
members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill
protecting civil liberties is defeated .
2103 version is massively unpopular – across the aisle support for surveillance
Van Dongen, Independent National and International Security Expert, 2014
(Teun, How proponents of NSA’s digital surveillance have won – for now, U.S. and the World, 18/12/2014,
http://www.aspeninstitute.it/aspenia-online/article/how-proponents-nsa%E2%80%99s-digital-surveillancehave-won-%E2%80%93-now)
Already, November 18th was set to be a “do or die” moment for American spy agencies. On that day the Senate voted on a Bill that Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democratic Senator from Nevada, was hoping would bring about the long-awaited reform of the NSA, whose
digital mass surveillance program came under fire after the revelations by NSA-subcontractor Edward
Snowden. The most important and controversial parts of the Bill, ambitiously called the USA Freedom Act, were provisions to
restrict the NSA’s ability to gather digital data. For instance, had the Bill been adopted, it would have put a stop to the
bulk collection of US domestic phone records, forcing the NSA to file specific requests for information instead.
Additionally, the Bill recommended the introduction of so-called advocates, who could argue in court against the government. Currently, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which grants or dismisses government requests for surveillance warrants, only hears the case made by the
government, and there is no one to argue the other side. The role of advocates would have been to fill that gap and to make sure that a real discussion
the Bill was shot down , as only 58 Senators, two short of the 60 necessary to override a filibuster, supported
it. Predictably, many of the Bill’s opponents cited the increased terrorist threat, especially from the Islamic State, as
took place. However,
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a reason to block the USA Freedom Act. As Republican Senator Susan Collins put it with more than a touch of pathos,
“Why would we weaken
the ability of our intelligence community at a time when the threats against this country have never been
greater ?” Other prominent Senators, including Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Dianne Feinstein of
California, who chairs Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, opposed the Bill on similar grounds, claiming that the recent
emergence of new threats to US national security makes it inopportune to reign in the NSA.
Curtailing surveillance triggers massive fights in congress—backlash from hawks over
national security
*note – also under “Link – Generic”
Volz and Fox, Reporters for the National Journal, 6-3-2015
(Dustin and Lauren, “THE WAR OVER NSA SPYING IS JUST BEGINNING,”
http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2015/06/war-over-nsa-spying-just-beginning/114394/)
But while reformers hope Tuesday's victory is an appetizer to a multiple-course meal to rein in the NSA, security hawks—many of them Republicans
vying for the White House—hope to halt the post-Snowden momentum behind surveillance reform. And some already
are talking about unraveling the Freedom Act. "What you are seeing on the floor of the Senate is just the beginning," said Sen. Ron Wyden, a civil-liberties stalwart in the upper
chamber who serves on the intelligence committee and has worked for more than a decade to reform government surveillance. "There is a lot more to do when—in effect—
you can ensure you protect the country's safety without sacrificing our liberty." Wyden used the Freedom Act's passage to call for additional intelligence-gathering reforms
that he has long advocated, such as closing the so-called "backdoor search loophole" that allows U.S. spies to "incidentally" and warrantlessly sweep up the email and phone
communications—including some content—of Americans who correspond with foreigners. He added he plans to move quickly on reworking Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, before Congress is up backed up against its renewal deadline in 2017. The Oregon Democrat also supports tech companies in their ongoing tussle
with the administration over smartphone encryption as a key priority. While Google and Apple have begun to build their phones with "too-tough-to-crack" encryption
standards, the FBI has warned that the technology locks out the bad guys and the good—and can impede law-enforcement investigations. Wyden and his allies, though, are
bumping up against an impending presidential campaign, where many Republicans will jockey with one another to look toughest on national security. Few issues divide the
GOP White House contenders more than NSA surveillance, as defense hawks such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio continue to defend the NSA bulk
metadata program as necessary to protect the homeland, while libertarian-leaning agitators such as Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz warn voters of the privacy perils associated
with the government's prying eyes. Rubio, who has said he'd prefer that the NSA's phone dragnet be made permanent, issued a statement after the Freedom Act's passage
saying it fell to the next president to undo its policies. "The
failure to renew the expiring components of the PATRIOT Act was a
mistake," Rubio said in a statement after the vote. "The 'USA Freedom Act' weakens U.S. national security by outlawing the very programs our intelligence
community and the FBI have used to protect us time and time again. A major challenge for the next president will be to fix the significantly weakened intelligence system that
the current one is leaving behind." Paul, meanwhile, continues to fundraise on social media and in campaign emails off his hardline opposition to "illegal NSA bulk data
collection." The Kentucky senator succeeded in drawing enormous attention to the issue by forcing a temporary lapse this week of the Patriot Act's spy authorities, and has
vowed to limit the agency's mass surveillance practices "on day one" if elected president. But Paul also was a major obstacle for the Freedom Act's passage, repeatedly voting
against it and helping delay its consideration on grounds it didn't go far enough—and codified parts of the Patriot Act he thinks should stay dead. Cruz, meanwhile,
represented the middle ground and was a chief GOP backer of the legislation, setting up a potential argument with Paul debate stages about who has done more to fight
against mass surveillance. Any jockeying between the two will expose them to sniping from candidates on the other side of the debate, including potential candidate New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who often goes out of his way to condemn those who criticize government snooping. Rand Paul
already has become a regular
punching bag for the GOP field's security hawks. Back on Capitol Hill, many of the same members who were engaged in
defeating metadata reform warn that it only takes one security setback for Congress to stop taking powers
away from the NSA. "The next time there is a terrorist act within the United States, the same people are going to be coming to the floor seeking changes to the
tools that our intelligence community, our law enforcement community has at their disposal because the American people will demand it," said Sen. Richard Burr, the
chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Sen. Susan Collins, who also serves on the intelligence panel, recognized that reforms and oversight will likely continue now that the
USA Freedom Act has passed, but she said she's not so sure supporters of the Freedom Act won't have buyer's remorse down the line. "I believe it is actually going to expose
Americans' data to greater privacy risk and to vulnerability from computer data breaches," Collins said. The
momentum to end the NSA's phone
dragnet snowballed over the past year and a half as two review panels deemed it ineffective. President Obama pledged to end it "as it currently exists" and a
federal appeals court deemed it illegal. But further reforms—such as to the Internet surveillance program known as PRISM, which Snowden also revealed—are
likely to be tougher sells in Congress. For PRISM especially, that's in part because the program is considered more useful and
because it deals primarily with surveillance of foreigners. U.S. tech companies that are subject to PRISM, including Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, have called for changes to the
program. Yet when asked about whether he would work to take down PRISM, even Wyden bristled at the question. "I am going to keep it to the three that I am going to
change," Wyden said. Even reformers outside the confines of the Senate recognize that ending PRISM is a complicated pursuit. "It is not going to be quite as easy to drum up
the same support," says Liza Goitein, codirector for the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Though PRISM may prove difficult to upend,
other efforts, such as a broadly supported push to update the decades-old Electronic Privacy Communications Act, may prove more palatable. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike
Lee, the lead authors of the Freedom Act in the upper chamber, indicated their desire to move quickly on passing legislation that would update the law to require law
enforcement obtain warrants before accessing the content of Americans' old emails.
The immediate next battlefield for civil liberties groups
will find them on the defense , as they attempt to prevent legislation that would increase the sharing of certain cyber data
among the private sector and the government in order to better fend off data breaches. Such proposals, which
Johnson County Debate 2012
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already passed the House and are likely to be before the Senate in the coming weeks, could grant the NSA access to more personal data,
privacy advocates warn. No matter how the looming debates shake out, for now, one thing is clear: the fight over the government's
surveillance operations is far from over.