Anti-Terrorism or Anti-Privacy?

A class action-lawsuit was filed by the Non-profit group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation against President Bush and the National Security Agency on Sep. 18th 2008 in hopes of putting a stop to the illegal surveillance of Telephone and Internet traffic by Telecom companies in America. The EFF had previously filed a law-suit against AT&T Corporation claiming that it had provided to the NSA without warrants access to its communication lines and customer records. The latter lawsuit was overturned by the Government this year and Telecom companies that were instrumental in helping the Agency were granted immunity. With President Bush and a few other officials ardently defending this surveillance technique the “Right To Privacy” seems to have been conveniently forgotten and ignored.

Back in 2001 when President Bush first passed the program, the National Surveillance Agency began listening in the US without court warrants which was followed by a statement in January 2007 that the surveillance had been put to a stop without court authorization. However, some programs continued on without judicial monitoring. The lawsuit in 2008 was filed by five AT&T customers with the help of information received by a former AT&T technician who claimed to have seen the NSA install equipment at a communication centre in San Francisco which would enable the company to monitor large amounts of Internet traffic.

The Government claims that this program will enable them to monitor any kind of conversation they think is suspicious which can possibly help them in averting terrorist attacks on America. This lead me to think about the group of people that would be likely subjects for this surveillance program which then invariably lead me to think that yes it would probably be the Muslim folk. Now I may be wrong but being Muslim myself I can’t help but think that this is “racial profiling” and it saddens me to think that even though I have spent quite a few years of my life in the States and have come to admire a lot that the country is representative of, I am under surveillance because of my religion and even more frustrating is the fact not once in the news have I heard of any terrorist ploy being sabotaged with the help of this surveillance program. All in all I think it’s just a gross violation of privacy and not very instrumental against the "war on terrorism".