NSA must prove value of phone program

    Edward Snowden is an exiled American computer specialist and former CIA employee and NSA contractor who disclosed classified details of several top-secret United States and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. Since his emergence in June, Americans have learned a lot about how our government is keeping tabs on us all. For seven years, the National Security Agency has been collecting detailed phone data on hundreds of millions of Americans not suspected of anything. The NSA has harvested millions of e-mail and instant messaging contact lists. Though the program is targeted at foreigners, it sweeps in many ordinary Americans. They are also building a 1 million square-foot fortress in Utah to hold a massive collection of data. 

    The question our author is asking is; Is searching for a needle in the haystack in order to connect all the dots the best way to approach this? The problem is that we're not simply talking about hay or dots but millions of Americans and their private information being on tap for whenever the government feels it is needed. Our own lawmakers knew very little about what was going on. The author goes on to say also, that if this technology and practice were around could we have rewrote history prior to 9/11? During that time we did have lots of data, but did not have the means or capacity to share this vital information among fellow agencies. The author seems to be giving us a choice and has a neutral feel to it because at the end he adds "Choosing between privacy rights and security from terrorism is difficult. But before Americans are forced to make that choice, the government ought to demonstrate that this intrusive program has extraordinary value. So far, the administration hasn't even come close." We can truly see both sides of the spectrum in this conundrum of privacy vs. national security.