Government Surveillance

The NSA uses their Bulk Collection Program to collect data on citizens and foreigners using telephone metadata. Many will argue that the data is used to protect us against attacks similar to 9/11. However, I believe that the telephone data should be limited because the collecting of telephone data on citizens violates our rights to unreasonable searches. I agree with the fact that measures have to be taken in order for us to protect the nation against enemies of the state. However, the method of collecting data in such a wide range is unconstitutional and should have more limitations. Also, according to studies by New America Foundation we saw that our traditional methods initiated majority of terrorism cases. If this is so then that means we should limit our use of data collection and minimize it to only have it necessary for telephone companies to transfer the data to the government if calls from overseas are made. In each instance, the call from overseas was a major deal breaker in finding whether a person was conducting acts of terrorism. Furthermore, we need to figure out policy wise which agency has the right to call for the data. The data seems to be shared across different federal agencies but none are acting swiftly enough for the use of the data collection to be meaningful. As a result, due to the lack of swiftness and wide range of unconditional data collecting, I find the program to be unconstitutional and goes against citizens rights to unreasonable searches.