Discussion Board

In our US Constitution, citizens have the right to protections against unreasonable searches and seizures conducted by government.  Recently, however, many have criticized the US government for undermining this constitutional right.  Specifically, people criticize the National Security Administration for its secret collection of US citizen phone records like whom we call, when, and how long we talk to them.  Additionally, the NSA has been secretly collecting internet data of US citizens from 9 major US Internet companies (including emails, photos, videos, documents, and other user activities).  These companies include Apple, Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, Google, Aol, and Yahoo.  Many argue that these government actions constitute an “unreasonable” search on US citizens.

So the question is this:  Does this collection of data violate the 4th Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, or is this a reasonable search?  When answering this question, here are some additional questions to possibly consider:  What is the reason the government gives to data mine its citizens?  Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy when browsing the web?  Are our email accounts on Google or Yahoo servers really our own or are they the internet company’s to decide what to do with?

For more context on this situation, here is a cite that you can refer to:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/07/nsa-surveillance-program-explained-here-s-why-we-re-freaking-out.html

Instructions

You will have until April 23rd by 7:00pm to post a response.  Your response should include the following:

1. An answer to the question provided in a minimum of 10 quality sentences (1 point).
2. At least one piece of evidence to support your position.  Evidence includes statements from respected sources, real life qualitative examples, or quantitative statistical data.  This evidence can come from your required readings, outside newspaper articles, reports found online, etc. (1 point).
3. A full citation of evidence used (1 point).