Thomas Winterton Speech

Hello! As most of you already know, my name is Thomas. I stand before you today as a peer, as an equal, with a simple question with a simple goal. The goal I have in mind is not to enrage, alienate, or to shame anyone in this room, I simply want you guys and gals to think upon what I am about to say for the next 3 ½ to 8 ½ minutes, let my words not come as an affront to your beliefs, but as a friendly statement from one friend to another with the hope of catalyzing a thought in your brilliant minds. I feel it is important that as the future citizens of our great society, we absolutely must challenge ourselves to step outside our narrowing belief systems. The longer we believe a certain idea, the harder it is to change that idea, to form a new opinion on the given subject. In most instances today, people will be so intoxicated by their beliefs that they forget to see any opposing ideas that might in fact be better than their own. Now please don’t get me wrong, disagreeing is a part of life and in some situations is healthy for the mind. Disagreement in some cases causes people to think, to absorb an opposing idea’s merits and challenge them against their own ideas, this process generates healthy discussion and in some cases allows people to perform the rare and monumental act of changing their minds simply because they left their brain open to foreign thought. We find though that there are also people who have such a vicious fixation on a certain idea that they forget that there is more than just one correct answer to the issues that plague society. So I come before you today with a simple goal, to cause every last person in this room, despite your better judgement, despite any opinions about the topic I am going to present to you, to think about what I say and to not let past convictions govern how you receive my ideas.

The topic that I wish to discuss is over the NSA and its controversial data mining methods. But first allow me to pose the question; is security worth the sacrifice of extreme electronic privacy? I am inclined to believe that security is indeed worth the sacrifice of electronic privacy.  The NSA was created in response to the attacks of 9/11 with the goal of preventing future terrorist attacks on the United States. You see electronic media allows for seamless connectivity between the people of the world. If I wanted to I could pick up the phone right this second and call a friend who resides in Australia, such a fantastic privilege has been abused by terror groups to recruit new members to its fold along with orchestrating attacks on our country from overseas. We simply cannot protect ourselves properly from the immediate threat that terrorism poses without the crucial assistance of NSA surveillance. Allow me to express my point. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said that American surveillance had prevented “potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” (From a house intelligence committee hearing.) Imagine if even one of those plots came to pass and terrorists managed to take the lives of innocents? If even one life could have been saved by NSA surveillance would it not be worth it? If 100 lives could be saved by NSA surveillance would it not be worth it? If it meant you lost a small portion of your electronic privacy, would you be so wrought with selfishness that you could care less about those lives as long as your texts, emails, and phone records are for your eyes only?

Allow me to shed light on the NSA’s data retrieval procedures and educate some critics, based on documents released by the NSA. (Propublica.org “FAQ: What You Need to Know about the NSA’s Surveillance Programs) The NSA directly gathers info from any source on the web including, social media, emails, web searches, and online purchases. You are probably thinking “there’s like a billion people in America, how they could possibly go through all the data?” Let me put the NSA’s technology into perspective for you. The NSA has a super computer called the “thinking machine,” this machine is capable of cracking most encryptions in the world, and it is capable of cracking the most common encryption in mere seconds, but this might as well be Chinese to most of you so I will explain, encryption is like a password to a message. A common encryption can have around 70 quadrillion possibilities, that’s 70 thousand billion, it would take a home computer 22,000 years to crack a common encryption, the “thinking machine” can do it in just a few seconds, and this was in the early 2000’s (NSA : Documentary on the Secret Intelligence Agency NSA). That being said there is a large probability that the NSA has collected some data from you. The NSA can gather from the stated mediums by themselves through their data gathering software’s, which stores that data and if an individual is flagged as a possible threat by any federal agency, that info is then viewed. But not before being flagged. The NSA can also gather the “meta data” of your phone records and text messages through the cooperation of cell phone companies. This “meta data” which essentially means the date, time, and place of the call/ text and the contact it was sent to. This data is then used to build an identity, the NSA can identify who your family is based on volume of texts/ calls to those people along with who your friends. To clarify, this electronic data is being mined and saved by a simple computer program, if you are a regular citizen, none of your personal info will ever be viewed by an NSA analyst. In the event that your info is analyzed by an analyst then one or more of the following events have occurred, you have contacted an individual on a “watch list”, communicated overseas, have committed an aggressive felony, a family member is on a watch list or you not a citizen of the United States. If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.

Despite everything I just said I must admit that the NSA has not revealed all of its techniques used to collect data to the public, it makes them look like they have something to hide, that they are corrupt, and that they are a mysterious organization with unchecked power to oppress the people. This is a perfectly logical fear to the average mind, but we do not have average minds. Allow me to Segway into my response with a quote from Gerald Walpin, former inspector general. “A transparency community within an intelligence community is an unworkable oxymoron.” (Gerald Walpin- National review) I will explain with a crude  analogy, If I was a boxer, and I’m about to fight the fight of my life, do I announce my fighting strategies to my opponent before the fight or do I keep my mouth shut and fight the good fight? While there is no perfect situational comparison to the NSA, this analogy serves my purpose all the same; if the NSA discloses every tool at their disposal it will be that much harder for them to stop terrorists.

The NSA has saved many lives despite what critics say, regardless of their controversial methods, they are working to keep us safe. We work these ideas into our minds that they have wronged us through their pursuit of justice. We must realize for the NSA to continue being effective, we must let them do their job and trust them with their duties until they prove untrustworthy. We cannot let the theoretical abuses of the NSA outweigh the concrete threats we face today. It’s not the system we deserve, but it’s the system we need.

"FAQ: What You Need to Know About the NSA’s Surveillance Programs." Top Stories RSS. N.p., 05 Aug. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

Walpin, Gerald. "We Need NSA Surveillance." National Review Online. N.p., 16 Aug. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

Alexander, Keith B., Gen. "N.S.A. Chief Testifies on Surveillance." The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 June 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.

"NSA : Documentary on the Secret Intelligence Agency NSA." YouTube. YouTube, 8 Jan. 2015. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.