To preserve the right of its users who visit the website on a monthly basis, Wikipedia announced Wednesday it was suing the National Security Agency. This announcement made me question why more people and organizations aren’t doing the same.
Americans seem to love their amendments, but nobody really cares that the NSA violates the Fourth Amendment, which states every citizen has the right to privacy, and the First Amendment, which vows freedom of expression and association.
We were told the NSA was mainly created to prevent terror attacks by spying on people and figuring out their evil plans as early as possible. And because terrorism is such a scary topic, if the government argues something could help get rid of it, people seem to support it even though it might be bad for society.
However, this isn’t really the case in other countries. When it came out that the NSA tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone, I looked at German news, talked to my family that lives in Berlin and hoped the Germans would not start World War III.
It seemed like the U.S. forgot who, they are spying on because, even though Germany has a pretty bad history, the country has changed and does not have any reason to launch terror attacks on anybody.
That scandal changed Germany. Not only did Germany’s leaders feel betrayed by a good friend, but German citizens became more paranoid online. All of my German friends and family started using fake names on social media and were careful about what they wrote in text messages and said during phone calls.
It’s funny how the U.S., a country that basically has a whole song about freedom, cares less about having it taken away than a country that has been completely free for only about 25 years.
A report about the uselessness of the NSA was published in January by the nonprofit think tank New America Foundation. After investigating the 227 Al-Qaeda-affiliated people or groups that have been charged for committing an act of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11, it found just 17 of the cases were credited to NSA surveillance. Just one of these convictions came out of the government’s extra-controversial practice of spying on its own citizens. The other 210 threats were detected by old technology and law enforcement methods like tips, informants and the CIA.
It should frustrate people that this surveillance project, which was created to protect us, mostly violates America’s amendments and harms good relationships with other countries. As if that wasn’t enough, it also hurts the American economy.
Many companies have reported declining sales overseas and lost business opportunities, especially as foreign companies turn claims of products that can protect users from NSA spying into a competitive advantage. China, for instance, does not want to take any chances and is going to mostly rely on Chinese companies when it comes to communication technology, according to a report published by Reuters in February.
The only thing the American government really gains from the NSA is the useless private information of non-terrorists. It does not make the world safer. It only makes people more paranoid to share drunken photos of themselves on Facebook.
The country that pretty much defined freedom is now the reason it is limited.
Markus Hüfner is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Kristiansand, Norway. You can follow him on Twitter @MHufner_TDR.