Electronic Surveillance is Killing Innocents

The widely known fact that the NSA uses electronic surveillance over actual human technology is troublesome. Today, the primary way that the United States locates terrorists and authorizes attacks is through the information received from surveillance devices such as drones and cell phone SIM cards, but this creates a huge problem in that the technology has been found to be unreliable. Because the use of such technologies has been continued without a second thought given to the innocent lives that are being taken in the process, it seems as if the United States has no regard for the death of innocents when in the process of killing terrorists. That begs the question of which is the greater evil, killing terrorists and sacrificing innocent lives at the same time, or letting terrorists go free so that innocents can live?
The thing about technology is that it can never be quite as reliable as human intelligence is. This is shown when terrorists or people being watched by the CIA might unknowingly leave their cell phone with their family members therefore putting targets on innocent peoples backs who have no idea what is going on; they don’t know that the CIA is keeping tabs on their cell phone through its SIM card, and the CIA doesn’t always know who is in possession of the phone either. Therefore, even though they are not involved, civilians are being put in the hot seat for their connections to terrorists even though they may have never done something wrong, making a case for the fact that these technologies are dangerous and putting innocent people at a high risk for being killed.The former JSOC drone operator states that “innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic,” and the CIA’s hope that the person on the other end of the SIM card is the bad guy is dangerous to everyone who is in the near vicinity of someone planning on committing acts of terrorism.
Due to metadata errors, the wrong people are getting killed, especially in places in which there is no human intelligence on the ground to report back real time data. Going off of this, although two sources of data must confirm the strike before it is actually carried out, sometimes both sources are non-human and therefore this can still result in the wrong subjects being killed. Based on all the innocent lives that have been taken, human intelligence is needed to ensure that no civilians are being injured or killed, and it is highly unfortunate that no one is taking responsibility for the innocent lives being lost and the White House won’t comment on any of the drone strikes it has carried out that have resulted in the deaths of innocent people. Along with this, because hits only remain valid for about 60 days, drone operators are more likely to strike when they get the chance to regardless of the potential civilian casualties simply because they may never get the chance to strike the terrorist they are after ever again if they go on the run, etc. Thus, because so many people believe that the data collecting bots never lie, many rushed decisions are made that are sometimes wrong and this is unfair to the innocent people whose lives are being taken.

It seems as if the government would argue in cases in which civilian lives are lost that the greater evil would be to let terrorists go free, and that losing some innocent life is worth it if it can prevent massive terrorist attacks in the future, however, most civilians would beg to differ. There is no reason that an innocent life should be disregarded simply because there is a chance to kill someone worse. Drone strikes and attacks that are confirmed without human intelligence are what threatens the integrity that the United States was built on, and it threatens the morals that most strive to live by. If innocent life is worth nothing, then what is even important to us anymore? If the country is so caught up in the act of trying to catch the bad guy that it kills more good guys than not, then it seems as if that is an evil act in and of itself.

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