Affirmative

Resolved: The United States ought to prioritize the pursuit of national security objectives above the
digital privacy of its citizens.
Definition:
RA:
1. National security objectives seek to nullify any hazard that threatens the constitution of the
nation.
2. NGOs can pursue national security objectives above digital privacy. The resolution isnt
USFG specific.
Value: Societal Welfare
-The overall welfare of the society as a whole
Criterion: Net Benefit
-The side that proves the greatest benefit from a national perspective ought to win the round. It
allows weighing cost beneficially and ethically as long as it ties back to the US as an actor making the
criterion entirely equitable.
Contention 1: Privacy is an intermediary right subject to suspension in the face of security threats
A: Privacy is a secondary right
There is no explicit right to privacy. If anything, it is a supplemental right that
always comes secondary to the essential security rights.
Livingston 3
These actions are seen by some as an assault on privacy and a reduction of personal freedom, yet few would suggest that authorities
be barred from access to such data. In a 1902 case, Judge Alton B. Parker noted, "The so-called right of
privacy is, as the phrase suggests, founded upon the claim that a man has the right to pass through
this world, if he wills, without having his picture published, his business enterprises discussed, his successful
experiments written up for the benefit of others, or his eccentricities commented upon either in handbills, circulars,
catalogues, periodicals or newspapers."2 Such a view, however, is quaint and unsuited to contemporary
times. Does it mean that a man should not have his business enterprises discussed if he is making dangerous products or evading
his taxes? More to the point, what if a bank is laundering money to facilitate terrorist attacks? And
should a person's "eccentricities" be overlooked if they include bomb building or, on a more domestic
level, the dissemination of predatory child pornography? Americans have no expectation of
complete privacy. The Constitution does not explicitly grant or even address the right of
privacy. It is what an Economist article describes as a "modern right", not mentioned by 18th-
century revolutionaries in their lists of demands or even "enshrined in international human-
rights laws and treaties until after the second world war".3 The Declaration of Independence,
on the other hand, states without equivocation that every man is entitled to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness". Note that life is the pre-eminent value. Above all else, it is for the
protection of the lives of its citizens and their cherished freedoms, that the government has
undertaken some of the steps that might be considered as intrusions on privacy. We submit to
checks of our baggage and person in order to board an aircraft, and most of us do so with little complaint, despite the
inconvenience, because we want to arrive safely at our destinations. Likewise, most Americans are not terribly
concerned by warrantless wiretaps of terrorist suspects, because they believe that their
security and that of their families depends on aggressive measures by the government to
combat terrorism. The current debate over privacy is, in many ways, specious, and it has become a clich , as T.A. Taipale
has written, "that every compromise we make to civil liberties in the 'war on terrorism' is itself a victory for those who would like to
destroy our way of life".4 While most Americans have an expectation of privacy in their own homes,
especially in terms of their intimate relations, the current debate does not revolve around
such issues. Rather it concerns technologies that are, in most respects, public, where there is
no presumption of privacy in a traditional sense. Airline travel, the use of telephones and
access to the internet are not rights, rather they are privileges and, as such, they are very
much public activities and endeavours. Accordingly, some level of government oversight is not unreasonable in
order to maintain the integrity of the systems that underpin such technologies and to prevent them from being used to harm others.
If someone wants to opt out and not be subject to government scrutiny, he or she can forgo airline travel, the use of the telephone
and the internet, and even personal identification and credit cards. I would even be willing to implement a two-tier security system
at the airport which has one line for flyers who voluntarily surrender some personal data and perhaps even a biometric in order to
expeditiously pass through security and a second line for those desiring anonymity, who therefore will be subjected to a complete
and thorough search of their person and luggage. The great civil libertarian and Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black wrote that, "I
like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless
prohibited by some specific constitutional provision."5 Our Constitution clearly protects us from egregious violations of our rights
and I fully embrace appropriate measures to ensure that government does not abuse its power. At the same time, Americans are a
pragmatic and commonsense people who understand that there are few, in any, absolutes in life and that their privacy is not being
unreasonably eroded by efforts taken to ensure their security and prevent terrorist and other malicious attacks. They believe,
moreover, that the first obligation of government is to protect its citizens, and are willing to grant authorities a measure of latitude
in this task.

B: National Security Demands Immediacy
Digital Media is the new site for national security defense. With threats present
that threaten US infrastructure and consequently the linchpin of US national
security, digital surveillance is necessary.
(Neil C. Livingstone, terrorism & national security expert, board member for John P. Murtha
Institute of Homeland Security and the International Institute for Homeland Security, PhD from
the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, The Economist, Debate on Privacy & Security,
Proposition Opening Remarks,
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/131#pro_statement_anchor, February 5 2008)
Today we face unprecedented security risks to our lives and the fragile infrastructures we
depend on to sustain our livelihoods and well-being. Our enemies are far more sophisticated than the
stereotype of a bearded jihadist toting an AK-47 hunkered down in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, an illiterate and
superstitious Luddite eager to impose the nostrums and doctrines of the 7th century on the modern world. In reality, many
jihadists are technologically sophisticated and linked together by the Internet, which they use to
download information on our vulnerabilities and assist them in the design and construction of
explosive devices and even chemical, biological and radiological weapons. And, as a Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations report directed by former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn concluded, "It is not a matter of 'if'
but rather 'when' such an event [chem, bio, or nuclear] will occur." In response to this very
real and ongoing threat, the US government has taken a number of steps to monitor the
activities, communications and movements of potential terrorists and other aggressors here
and around the globe and to amass data, with the assistance of advanced information
technologies, to authenticate and verify the identities of both citizens and non-citizens alike.
The president has also signed a recent directive that expands federal oversight of internet
traffic in an attempt to thwart potentially catastrophic attacks on the government's computer
systems.

There is a fluid tradeoff between liberty and security that is defined by the times. During the Second
World War freedom of speech was suspended and mail was selectively checked. We suspend personal
rights if security is being substantially threatened. While we may not be in as readily apparent danger as
a world war, our digital infrastructural weaknesses and the advent of sporadic terror make us equally as
insecure.
C: National security will always take priority over digital privacy
To ensure privacy in the long run, it must be traded for national security to
adjust for modern security necessities
(Neil C. Livingstone, terrorism & national security expert, board member for John P. Murtha
Institute of Homeland Security and the International Institute for Homeland Security, PhD from
the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, The Economist, Debate on Privacy & Security,
Proposition Rebuttal,
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/132#pro_statement_anchor, February 8 2008)
My honourable opponent, Mr Barr, has offered up a great many generalisations about privacy that may be fine in theory but which
have little application in the modern world. Like Mr Barr, I believe that privacy is a basic right that should be
supported to the extent possible, but whereas he regards privacy as underpinning all other rights, I view it as one
of the benefits of a secure nation capable of successfully thwarting foreign assaults by those
who neither share our values nor subscribe to our democratic principles. In other words, if you
have little security you most assuredly will have little privacy, for privacy is one of the benefits
of a secure society, just like political freedom. Any people who live in constant fear and trepidation
are unlikely to place great value on abstract rights like privacy and freedom. Adlai E. Stevenson
observed: "A hungry man is not a free man." Well, Mr Barr, neither is a frightened man. The right to privacy,
moreover, does not mean that every man can live completely apart from society, anonymous
and uncounted like Thoreau at Walden's Pond, free from any obligations to the welfare of his or her
fellow citizens. As I suggested in my opening remarks, we may no longer consistently avoid the notice of
others simply by minding our own business; the contemporary world is just too complicated
for that and the threats too serious. We may offer nonconformists some anonymity so long as they don't try to board
an airplane, use the internet, or pay for a purchase with a credit card. But it is not too much to ask that every citizen have some form
of secure personal identification. This is critical to an orderly and smoothly functioning society, and not only helps in the fight against
terrorism but is the key to halting illegal immigration. Mr Barr argues that it is a suspension of common sense that the so-called
"good guys" must be profiled to discover the "bad guys". But what is he suggesting? That we should forgo any effort to collect data
about airline passengers because we will necessarily accumulate more data about non-terrorists than terrorists, given that there are
tens of millions of ordinary flyers compared with only a handful of terrorists? Our task is to differentiate between
malicious actors like terrorists and criminals and the great mass of ordinary humans who
simply want to go about their activities free from the threat of being mugged, robbed, defrauded, sexually
assaulted, hijacked, maimed or killed in a terrorist blast, or harmed in some other way. Most citizens are willing to
permit governments, in the words of K.A. Taipale, to employ "advanced information technologies to
help identify and find actors who are hidden among the general population and who have the
potential for creating harms of such magnitude that a consensus of society requires that
government adopt a preventative rather than reactive approach".1 Mr Barr also contends that "In this
universe, every personneighbour, co-worker, fellow passengeris and will remain a potential terrorist." In reality, the truth is
precisely the opposite. The use of advanced information technologies will enable us to draw
distinctions between ordinary law-abiding citizens and what Mr Barr refers to as the "bad guys".
Scarce resources can then be focused on potential suspects rather than on the broad masses.
Once this is accomplished, our safety, as well as our privacy, can be better preserved. Barr
further asserts that "You will find terrorists, if at all, by gathering good intelligence, and by adhering to sound intelligence and law
enforcement techniques." I concur, but what does he think these "techniques" consist of? I certainly hope he is not advocating a
return to the naive period characterised in US Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson's famous remark that "Gentlemen do not read
each other's mail." It was because of short-sighted men like Mr Stimson that little more than a decade later the US suffered the
Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, in large part because the US had no real intelligence service and was reluctant to employ
modern technologies to monitor potential challenges from abroad. The advent of modern terrorism and the
existence of chemical, biological and nuclear threats make it impossible to consider concepts like privacy in
the framework of old laws and attitudes. At the same time, we should not make a fetish out of security or the new
technologies on which it depends. But neither should we ignore these technologies because we are afraid they might be misapplied
or misused. Today, for example, we utilise modern information technologies to protect our societies and keep track of terrorists and
other malefactors. This includes the use of surveillance cameras, access to major databases, telephone and email intercepts, and
various methodologies for authenticating identity. Protecting privacy in this era calls for appropriate rules and regulations to ensure
that such information is not used promiscuously or out of context, and there must be independent government oversight by, in the
US, the Congress and the courts. It is absolutely incumbent on us that we protect our societies and
promulgate a sense of security among our citizens, for not only do we face unparalleled
threats from abroad, but it should be remembered the tyrant always comes in the guise of the protector. The first duty
of government is to protect its citizens and if it fails this test then all of our other rights and
privileges, including privacy, will soon be under assault. Rather than railing against technological intrusions on
privacy, Mr Barr should recognise that these same technologies may, in the end, reinforce privacy in the modern world. In other
words, by contributing to the security of modern societies, new information and surveillance
technologies may actually do more to promote privacy than to diminish it.
Two impacts arise in regards to our modern society based on Livingstones analysis
1. Blending in paradigm shift- It has become substantially easier to blend into our modern world.
During the civil war, if you wore the colors of the opposing side, your sentence was death. Now,
in the melting pot that is America, transparency between hostiles and civilians is all but
nonexistent. To effectively subdue those rare few who would violate our essential rights, it
becomes essential to search many more. The negation may posit that this grants the potential
for governmental power abuse with civilian information but considering how that is potential
abuse that is unsubstantiated by any modern empirics vs the very real and present security
threats enumerated in Livingston and apparent during the 9-11 attacks, this isnt a justified
reason to reject digital surveillance.
2. Preventative vs reactive- Due to their anonymity, a terrorist threat that could take lives or
cripple our infrastructure could appear at any time. It was a lack of effective preventative
surveillance that leads to both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the world trade centers. In a
world where modern war is fought in sporadic attacks, preventative defense is the most realistic
way to prevent major life loss and ensure our essential rights.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE U.S. IS BLAMELESS IN ITS VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE WAR
ON TERROR. HOWEVER, WE MUST DISTINGUISH IN OUR CRITIQUE BETWEEN DIRECT HUMAN RIGHTS
ABUSES AND THOSE OTHER COMPLAINTS THAT WE FEAR AS INSTRUMENTALLY-PROBLEMATIC. ANY
COMPLAINT WE HAVE ABOUT OUR LOSS OF PRIVACY HAS AT ITS END POINT A DIFFERENT FEAR WHICH
SHOULD BE ADDRESSED. IF YOU ARE AFRAID OF THE GOVERNMENT TORTURING YOU FROM FALSE
INFORMATION, YOUR PROBLEM LIES WITH THE CHOICE TO TORTURE, NOT WITH DOMESTIC SPYING. IF
YOU FEAR MISUSE OF COLLECTED DATA, YOUR COMPLAINT IS AGAINST CORRUPTION, NOT WITH
DOMESTIC SPYING. IN A RADICAL ATTEMPT TO STRIKE AT THESE TRUE PROBLEMS, WE RUN THE RISK OF
FORGETTING THAT WHILE TERRORISM MAY BE A CONVENIENT POLITICAL SCAPEGOAT, IT IS STILL A REAL
PHENOMENON, WITH REAL VICTIMS AND REAL AGGRESSORS, DEMANDING REAL ACTION.
Contention 2: National Security Benefit
A: terrorism
CIA OFFICIALS ADMIT THAT IN MODERN TIMES, OF THE THREE TERRORIST
PREVENTION METHODS, DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE IS THE ONLY WAY TO
EFFECTIVELY PREVENT TERRORISM
Bill Harlow and Marc Theissen, 6/13, [Bill Harlow is a writer, consultant and public relations specialist
with over thirty years of experience including assignments in some of the toughest communications
positions in the U.S. government. He spent seven years as the top spokesman for the Central Intelligence
Agency and four years at the White House handling national security media matters for two Presidents;
American author, columnist and political commentator, who served as a speechwriter for United States
President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld], "Experts Explain Why the NSA
Program is Necessary", Secure Freedom Radio,
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/06/13/arguing-for-the-nsa/.
Edward Snowdens leak of NSA secrets to the media is reprehensible and as the program stands now the American public has no
need for privacy concerns, agree Bill Harlow, former CIA head spokesman, and Marc Thiessen, former speechwriter to President
George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. On Frank Gaffneys Secure Freedom Radio show Wednesday, Harlow
strongly condemned Snowdens actions, though he stopped short of calling him a traitor, saying that at the very least Snowden is
clearly a criminal, because he had obligations to protect sensitive information and he decided on his own that he was smarter than
everyone in the Executive Branch, all 535 members of Congress, and members of the Judicial Branch in deciding what he could pass
on and what he couldnt. Thiessen explained that the leaks will cause significant damage to US anti-terror efforts, because it gives
the terrorists information about how we track them, which we dont want them to posses, and it assists them in their ability to avoid
detectionAt the same time, youre discouraging companies from cooperating with the US governmentWe depend a lot on
voluntary cooperation of private businesses in the War on Terror. When their participation is exposed in this way and their
international reputations are put at risk and they have outraged calls from stockholders and from customers about this sort of thing,
it makes them less likely that theyre going to help us. The overall effect, Thiessen says, is that sources and liason partners across
the world look at this and say America cant keep a freakin secret. Thiessen also stressed how vital the PRISM program and the
phone-data collection programs are to national security. I think we should be celebrating the fact that the NSA is doing thisThe
fact is we are still facing a terrorist enemy who is trying to attack us. They dont have armies, navies, and air forces that we can track
with satellites. They send 19 men with box cutters to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. So there are only three ways we can
find out what their plans are, and in each case they have to tell us. The first case is interrogation. Getting them to
tell us their plans. Thanks to Barack Obama we dont do that any more. Second way to do it is
penetrationwhich is incredibly hard to doby infiltrating Al Qaeda, either just recruiting
double agents or getting someone placed in there.When we have done it weve been
fooled.So that leaves signaled intelligence. The only way that we have to find out what the
terrorists are planning and disrupt their plans is to listen to their communications, monitor
their e-mails, monitor them electronically. So if we get rid of this program, if this were to
disappear, we would be flying blind. On the initial outcry over the programs made public by the leaks, Harlow says
that Just six weeks ago when the Boston bombings happened many people were saying Why were we let down by the intelligence
community? Why didnt they collect the information that would allow us to stop incidences like that? And now just six weeks later
we have people crying Why are you trying to connect so many dots? Why are you trying to get information? I think people can be
genuinely concerned about the potential invasion of privacy, but you have to also understand that the only way
to collect much of this potential information about threats from overseas is to have access to
information which may pass through US servers. Harlows ultimate advice is that to tie our own hands and to
destroy a very important collection program on the suspicion that some day somebody might abuse it seem to me a bad way of
approaching good government.

B: disease
Meta-Data Searches can report disease outbreak in real time, faster than the
CDC and with greater accuracy
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Professor of internet governance and regulation at the oxford
internet institute, The Rise of Big Data, Foreign Affairs, June 2013
Medicine provides another good example of why, with big data, seeing correlations can be enormously valuable, even when the
underlying causes remain obscure. In February 2009, Google created a stir in health-care circles. Researchers at the company
published a paper in Nature that showed how it was possible to track outbreaks of the seasonal flu using nothing more than the
archived records of google searches. Google handles more than a billion searches in the United States
every day and stores them all. The company took the fifty million most commonly searched
terms between 2003 and 2008 and compared them against historical influenza data from the
center of disease control and prevention. The idea was to discover whether the incidence of certain searches
coincided with the outbreaks of the flu- in other words, to see whether an increase in the frequency of certain
google searches conducted in a particular geographic area correlated with the CDCs data on
outbreaks of flu there. The CDC tracks actual patient visits to hospitals and clinics across the
country, but the information it releases suffers from a reporting lag of a week or two- an
eternity in the case of a pandemic. Googles system, by contrast, would work in near-real
time.

Disease and pandemics are the largest annual killers in the US. Being able to best respond to disease is a
continual national security objective of the highest magnitude.

Digital surveillance defends essential rights in the two ways above thus justifying privacy suspension
directly

A2: surveillance is illegal
A2: Surveillance creates a culture of fear
A2: Surveillance is unsuccessful in protecting national security
A2: Surveillance isnt necessary. Minimal Security threats exist
A2: Abuse of power will occur
A2: There is no transparency in surveillance
A2: Surveillance is Illegal
NSA SURVEILLANCE IS LEGAL BASED ON PREVIOUS COURT PRECENDENT AND IS JUSTIFIED
UNDER THE 4
th
AMENDMENT
Bucci, Steven. [Dr., Director of The Heritage Foundation's Douglas & Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies]. "Phone Records and the NSA: Legal and Keeping America Safe," Heritage Foundation. June 20, 2013,
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/20/phone-records-and-the-nsa-legal-and-keeping-america-safe/
Over the past week, Snowden has inundated the world with details about the NSA collection of telephone records
from companies such as Verizon. However, according to a FISA court order, Verizon was only ordered to
hand over metadata of the calls it processed. Metadata refers to basic information, including
telephone number, location, and duration of the call, and the court order does not authorize the
government to access the content of such conversations. There is a growing body of legal precedent for the
NSA program. In 1976 the Supreme Court upheld the third party doctrine, which states that anyone
who voluntarily provides information to a third party, such as a telephone service provider, cannot
object if it is later turned over to the government. Whats more, in 1979, the Supreme Court held in
Smith v. Maryland that the government did not need a warrant to obtain phone record information as
it did for the content of such communications. The information was not constitutionally protected
because there was no true expectation of privacy. As a result, metadata collection is not protected under the
4th Amendment and is perfectly legal.
PRIVACY CONCERNS ARE NOT JUSTIFIED. WE ARE SIMPLY MAKING PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE
INFORMATION ACCESSIBLE TO NON-BIAS COMPUTER ALGORITHMS
Posner, Eric. [Law professor at the University of Chicago]. "I Dont See a Problem Here," The New York
Times. June 9, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/09/is-the-nsa-surveillance-threat-
real-or-imagined
The first objection strikes me as weak. We already give the government an enormous amount of information
about our lives, and seem to have gotten used to the idea that an Internal Revenue Service knows our
finances, or that an employee of a government hospital knows our medical history, or that social
workers (if we are on welfare) know our relationships with family members, or that public school teachers know
about our childrens abilities and personalities. The information vacuumed up by the N.S.A. was already available
to faceless bureaucrats in phone and Internet companies not government employees, but strangers just the
same. Many people write as though we make some great sacrifice by disclosing private information to
others, but it is in fact simply the way that we obtain services we want whether the market services of
doctors, insurance companies, Internet service providers, employers, therapists and the rest, or the nonmarket services of the
government like welfare and security. Even so, I am exaggerating the nature of the intrusion. The chance that human
beings in government will actually read our e-mails or check our phone records is infinitesimal (though I
can understand that organizations like the A.C.L.U. that have a legitimate interest in communicating with potential government
targets may be more vulnerable than the rest of us). Mostly all we are doing is making our information available
to a computer algorithm, which is unlikely to laugh at our infirmities or gossip about our relationships.

The governments superseding digital privacy--scanning metadata trends, for example--is not
illegal. Among the constitutionally enumerated powers for the President exists the obligation to
protect and defend the state and constitution. Furthermore, 4
th
Amendment rights to privacy only
apply when there are reasonable expectations of privacy. There exists no reasonable expectation
of privacy with digital and internet business, as there has been voluntary sharing of information
with a 3
rd
party.

White, United States v. Matlock, 415 US 164 (Supreme Court1974).

More generally, in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S., at 245-246, we noted that [the] our prior recognition of the
constitutional validity of "third party consent" searches in cases likeFrazier and Coolidge v. New
Hampshire,403 U. S. 443, 487-490 (1971), supported the view that a consent search is fundamentally
different in nature from the waiver of a trial right. These cases at least make clear that
when the prosecution seeks to justify a warrantless search by proof of voluntary consent, it
is not limited to proof that consent was given by the defendant, but may show that
permission to search was obtained from a third party who possessed common authority
over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected. The*172 issue now before us
is whether the Government made the requisite showing in this case

By sharing information to 3
rd
parties, 4
th
amendment claims are dropped.

Kagehiro, Dorothy K., Ralph B. Taylor, and Alan T. Harland. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy and Third-Party Consent Searches. Law
and Human Behavior 15, no. 2 (April 1, 1991): 121138. doi:10.2307/1394263.

The Courts test for binding voluntary consent by a third party hinged upon two notions. First, within shared premises, there were
commonauthority areas, marked by joint access or control that gave each co-occupant an independent power to authorize a warrantless search.
Second, with respect to these common authority areas, each co-occupant was presumed to
operate under an objective assumption of risk of disclosure/access by any other co-
occupant.



A2: Surveillance creates a culture of fear
Other nations have already embraced digital surveillance to stop real security
threats, finding great success and little push back
Livingston 2
We live in information-based societies and it is inevitable that law enforcement and security
forces will utilise these technologies in an effort to better protect us from malicious actors. In
Britain, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are used to fight crime and have elicited little
public concern or criticism. Authorities are also monitoring the internet more closely in an
effort to curtail child pornography.
The digital age has eliminated past notions of privacy. Trying to stop a
government from simply accessing this public resource is hampering security
initiatives by depriving these organizations with information everyone has
access to.
Privacy Protection in the Next Digital Decade: Trading Up or a Race to the
Bottom?
By Michael Zimmer*, pp486-487 in The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the
Internet, eds. Berkin Szoka & Adam Marcus, pub. Jan 19, 2011, TechFreedom, Washington.
And thats the second thing that Brandeiss article can tell us about more contemporary privacy flaps. His brand of resistance to
change is still alive and well in privacy circles, even if the targets have been updated. Each new privacy kerfuffle
inspires strong feelings precisely because we are reacting against the effects of a new
technology. Yet as time goes on, the new technology becomes commonplace. Our reaction dwindles
away. The raw spot grows a callous. And once the initial reaction has passed, so does the sense that
our privacy has been invaded. In short, we get used to it. At the beginning, of course, we dont want to get used to it.
We want to keep on living the way we did before, except with a few more amenities. And so, like Brandeis, we are tempted to ask the
law to stop the changes we see coming. Theres nothing more natural, or more reactionary, than that. Most privacy advocates dont see
themselves as reactionaries or advocates for the status quo, of course. Right and left, they cast themselves as underdogs battling for
change against the entrenched forces of big government. But virtually all of their activism is actually devoted
to stopping changekeeping the government (and sometimes industry) from taking advantage of new technology to process
and use information. But simply opposing change, especially technological change, is a losing battle. At heart, the privacy groups
know it, which may explain some of their shrillness and lack of perspective. Information really does want to be freeor at least
cheap. And the spread of cheap information about all of us will change our relationship to the world. We will have fewer secrets.
Crippling government by preventing it from using information that everyone else can
get will not give us back our secrets. In the 1970s, well before the personal computer
and the Internet, privacy campaigners persuaded the country that the FBIs newspaper
clipping files about U.S. citizens were a threat to privacy. Sure, the information was
public, they acknowledged, but gathering it all in one file was viewed as vaguely sinister.
The attorney general banned the practice in the absence of some legal reason for doing
so, usually called an investigative predicate. So, in 2001, when Google had made it
possible for anyone to assemble a clips file about anyone in seconds, the one institution
in the country that could not print out the results of its Google searches about
Americans was the FBI. This was bad for our security, and it didnt protect anyones
privacy either. The privacy campaigners are fighting the inevitable. The permanent record our high
school principals threatened us with is already herein Facebook. Anonymity, its
thrills and its freedom, has been characteristic of big cities for centuries. But anonymity
will also grow scarce as data becomes easier and easier to gather and correlate. We will lose
something as a result, no question about it. The privacy groups response is profoundly conservative in the William F. Buckley
sensestanding athwart history yelling, Stop!7 Im all for conservatism, even in unlikely quarters. But using laws to fight the
inevitable looks a lot like Prohibition. Prohibition was put in place by an Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority that was sure of its moral
superiority but not of its future. What the privacy community wants is a kind of data Prohibition for government, while the rest of us
get to spend more and more time in the corner bar. That might work if governments didnt need the data for important goals such as
preventing terrorists from entering the country. After September 11, though, we can no longer afford the forced inefficiency of
denying modern information technology to government. In the long run, any effective method of ensuring privacy is going to have to
focus on using technology in a smart way, not just trying to make government slow and stupid.

A2: Surveilance is unsuccessful in protecting national security
DATA GATHERING IS THE FIRST STEP IN TERROR PREVENTION
Erik J. Dahl, [Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California], "Discussion Point: It's not Big Data, but Little Data, that Prevents Terrorist Attacks" National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, July 25, 2013.
What should we make of all this? It helps to start by understanding how the data collected by the NSA programs
may be useful to the U.S. intelligence community. We dont actually know much about these programs, of
course, beyond what has been leaked by Edward Snowden and the claims by intelligence community officials that
this data has helped to stop a number of terrorist plots. But from what has been revealed publicly, it seems that
these collection programs are useful for what is often the first part of any intelligence effort:
gathering a lot more information than is actually needed. This first step is sometimes called a broad
area search, as intelligence agencies look in a lot of places, gathering a lot of useless information,
before they find the clues that help them narrow the search down to the second step, a focused
search for useful, actionable intelligence. This two-step approach was used in the search for Osama
bin Laden. After the 9/11 attacks he could have been anywhere, so the intelligence community spent
a lot of time running down leads that led to nowhere. But eventually they found the clues that
pointed them toward bin Ladens courier, and thats where the focused search began, leading them to the
compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
PROGRAMS HAVE ASSISTED THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO CONNECT THE DOTS.
Kimberly Dozier, [Associated Press], "NSA: Surveillance Programs Foiled Some 50 Terrorist Plots Worldwide,"
Huffington Post, June 18, 2013.
Intelligence officials have disclosed some details on two thwarted attacks, and Alexander promised additional
information to the panel on thwarted attacks that the programs helped stop. He provided few additional details. The programs "assist
the intelligence community to connect the dots," Alexander told the committee in a rare, open Capitol
Hill hearing. Alexander got no disagreement from the leaders of the panel, who have been outspoken in backing
the programs since Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, disclosed information to The Washington Post
and the Guardian newspapers.
SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS GREATLY INCREASE THE PROBABILITY OF MITIGATING A
TERRORIST THREAT
Kimberly Dozier, [Associated Press], "NSA: Surveillance Programs Foiled Some 50 Terrorist Plots Worldwide,"
Huffington Post, June 18, 2013.
In an online interview with The Guardian in which he posted answers to questions Monday, Snowden said that Zazi
could have been caught with narrower, targeted surveillance programs a point Obama conceded in his interview
without mentioning Snowden. "[In regards to the Newyork bombing Zazi case]We might have caught
him some other way," Obama said. "We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was
suspicious. Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the bomb didn't go off. But, at the margins,
we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs," he said.
Obama repeated earlier assertions that the NSA programs were a legitimate counterterror tool and that
they were completely noninvasive to people with no terror ties something he hoped to discuss with the
privacy and civil liberties board he'd formed. The senior administration official said the president would be
meeting with the new privacy board in the coming days.
NSA SURVEILLANCE HAS PREVENTED 50 ACTS OF TERRORISM
Bucci, Steven. [Dr., Director of The Heritage Foundation's Douglas & Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies]. "NSA Spying Stops Terrorism but Should Also Respect Liberties," Heritage. June 18, 2013,
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/18/nsa-spying-stops-terrorism-but-should-also-respect-liberties/
General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA), testified in an open hearing before the House
Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence on how intelligence collection supports the national effort to fight transnational terrorism. For the
first time, he revealed that more than 50 incidents of potential terrorism were stopped by the set of
programs under scrutiny. He emphasized that he was working to declassify these incidents so they could be shared with the American
people. These revelations come as no surprise to us. Heritage research has noted 54 foiled terrorist plots since 9/11.
Given that we know of only three that were not stopped by intelligence (the shoe bomber, the underwear
bomber, and the Times Square bomber), this means that these NSA programs might well have played a significant
role in thwarting dozens of uncovered plots. Heritage has long held that tools such as the PATRIOT Act and legitimate
surveillance programs can be important tools for battling transnational terrorism.

A2: Abuse of power will happen (second card highlight also answers motives arg)
THERE ARE INTERNAL CHECKS ON PRIVACY LOSS THAT DIRECTLY INTERACT WITH
CIVILIAN FEARS AND COMPLAINTS
Rosenzweig, Paul. [Visiting Fellow at Heritage Foundation]. "The State of Privacy and Security - Our Antique
Privacy Rules," The Heritage Foundation. August 1, 2012,
http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/2012/08/the-state-of-privacy-and-security-our-antique-privacy-rules
First, we are changing from a top-down process of command and control rule to one in which the principal
means of privacy protection is through institutional oversight. To that end, the Department of
Homeland Security was created with a statutorily required Privacy Officer (and another Officer for Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties).[46] The more recent Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act,[47]
and the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007[48] go further. For the
first time, they created a Civil Liberties Protection Officer within the intelligence community. More
generally, intelligence activities are to be overseen by an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board.[49] Indeed, these institutions serve a novel dual function. They are, in effect, internal
watchdogs for privacy concerns. In addition, they naturally serve as a focus for external complaints,
requiring them to exercise some of the function of ombudsmen. In either capacity, they are a new
structural invention on the American sceneat least, with respect to privacy concerns. Second, and perhaps most
significantly, the very same dataveillance systems that are used to advance our counter-terrorism
interests are equally well suited to assure that government officials comply with the limitations
imposed on them in respect of individual privacy. Put another way, the dataveillance systems are
uniquely well equipped to watch the watchers, and the first people who should lose their privacy are
the officials who might wrongfully invade the privacy of others.
SURVEILANCE PROGRAMS MAINTAIN COVERSATIONAL SPECIFIC INFORMATION
PRIVATE AND ONLINE MONITERING PROGRAMS ONLY APPLY TO NON CITIZENS OF
SUSPECT
Boot, Max. [Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations]. "Stay calm and let the
NSA carry on," The LA Times. June 9, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/09/opinion/la-oe-boot-nsa-
surveillance-20130609
At first blush these intelligence-gathering activities raise the specter of Big Brother snooping on
ordinary American citizens who might be cheating on their spouses or bad-mouthing the president. In
fact, there are considerable safeguards built into both programs to ensure that doesn't happen. The
phone-monitoring program does not allow the NSA to listen in on conversations without a court
order. All that it can do is to collect information on the time, date and destination of phone calls. It
should go without saying that it would be pretty useful to know if someone in the U.S. is calling a
number in Pakistan or Yemen that is used by a terrorist organizer. As for the Internet-monitoring
program, reportedly known as PRISM, it is apparently limited to "non-U.S. persons" who are abroad
and thereby enjoy no constitutional protections. These are hardly rogue operations. Both programs were
initiated by President George W. Bush and continued by President Obama with the full knowledge and support of
Congress and continuing oversight from the federal judiciary. That's why the leaders of both the House and
Senate intelligence committees, Republicans and Democrats alike, have come to the defense of these
activities. It's possible that, like all government programs, these could be abused see, for example, the IRS
making life tough on tea partiers. But there is no evidence of abuse so far and plenty of evidence in the
lack of successful terrorist attacks that these programs have been effective in disrupting terrorist
plots.

THE NSA IS AN ACCOUNTABLE PROGRAM. NO EVIDENCE CURRENTLY EXISTS TO
SUGGESTS ANY POWER ABUSE HAS TAKEN PLACE NOR HAVE ANY INNOCENT
AMERICAN CITIZENS BEEN TARGETED
Carroll, Conn. [senior writer for the Washington Examiner]. "Two Steps Back for National Security," The Heritage
Foundation. March 12, 2008, http://blog.heritage.org/2008/03/12/two-steps-back-for-national-security/
The abject scaremongering by the left on the NSAs warrantless domestic spying is not supported by
any facts. The details of the program in question have not, and should not, be revealed. But from what we can piece together from the
public record, the program in question touched domestic communications only incidentally and there is
zero evidence anywhere that anyone innocent Americans have had their telephone calls listened to or
their emails read. FISA experts have made it clear the NSA program in question was probably targeted
at electronic communications like email. Due to the complexity and interconnectedness of modern
communications, it is impossible for telecommunication companies, or the NSA, to instantly
determine whether a single packet of information traveling through a wire in the U.S. is purely foreign
in nature (someone in Baghdad e-mailing someone in Riyadh) or purely domestic. The NSA uses complex algorithms
to determine if a communication if foreign or domestic, but they first require cooperation from a
telecommunication company to keep that data.
Korb, Duggan, and Conly from the American Center for Progress
1
define national security
objectives as the following: [to] Protect the United States, its people, its allies and its
interests by effectively managing international security threats and ensuring global
stability [and to marshall] all elements of U.S. national power must be marshaled to defeat current
enemies, deter hostile regimes, bolster weak and failing states, prevent conflict by intervening before
disasters strike, and undermine the long-term appeal of extremist ideologies.
The implication is that the only time digital privacy would be violated would be when national
security objectives can be furthered. Thus, dont buy any negative slippery slope argumentation
about a totalitarian state. It simply wont happen.


1
Lawrence Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley [American Center for Progress], November 2009.
Integrating Society: Preparing for the National Security Threats of the 21
st
Century.
http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Integrating_Security.pdf
A2: There is no transparency in Surveillance
NEW NSA CHIEF WILL IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY.
PressTV, "NSA Chief Defends Surveillance Programs," http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/13/362422/nsa-
chief-defends-surveillance-programs/, May 13, 2014.
He also vowed to lead the spy agency with greater transparency. Rogers said he had told the rank and file at the NSA
that they should keep on as before, but come forward internally with anything they felt to be
improper. "It is by design that I have tried to start a series of engagements with a broader and
perhaps more different groups than we have traditionally done," Rogers told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in
Washington. "The dialogue to date that we have had for much of the last nine months or so from my
perspective, I wish was a little bit broader, had a little more context to it, and was a little bit more
balanced."