Thin Thread
The new millennium generation is under the impression that we have it made but could we be wrong? We are wrapped up in our iPhone, iPad on varies social media form that we lack awareness as to what is really happening in front of our faces. We are being continually misled and manipulated by the things we spend most of our time on. We are a generation that spends more than half of our day on various social media and communication systems. We are continually introduced to the next best thing in order from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snap chat. These popular systems are now being used to keep track of who, when, and how we go about communicating with others. Our emails are glanced at before we even know we have an email from our friends and families. The system that helps spy on us has been identified as the thin thread. It has been in effect for the past 10 years or more yet we have been blind to it.
Thin Thread is the name of a project that the United States national security agency pursued during the late 90s. The program involved wiretapping sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the numerous sources, the program was discontinued three weeks before the September 11 2001, attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority. Thin Thread collected data and got rid of useless information on the spot therefore avoiding the overload problem that plagued centralized systems. Binney says, “The beauty of it is that it was open-ended, so it could keep expanding.”
Thin Thread has proven to be a successful system, according to a former intelligence expert who analyzed it. “It was perfect,” the official says. “But it processed such a large amount of data that it picked up more Americans than the other systems.” Thin Thread was supposedly intended to intercept foreign communications, yet it continued documenting signals when a trail crossed into the U.S. This then become a big problem: due to the federal law forbade the monitoring of domestic communications without a court warrant. And a warrant couldn’t be issued without probable cause and a known suspect. In order to comply with the law, Binney installed privacy controls and added an “anonymizing feature,” so that all American communications would be encrypted until a warrant was issued. The system would indicate when a pattern looked suspicious enough to justify a warrant.
This very software goes against our first and fourth amendment. The first amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The fourth amendment originally enforced the notion that “each man’s home is his castle”, secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. It protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance, as well as being central to many other criminal law topics and to privacy law. These two amendment are not being displayed any way by utilizing this system yet it is justified as to why they feel the need to go against what they claim to stand so much for.
It has been debates numerous of times as to whether it should be discontinued because it goes against what we are supposed to stand for as a country. It is said to say that it is even being debated seeing that no one should have the right to just up and make changes to whether or not they have the right to invade our privacy. It has been said by government officials that it is hard to have complete privacy and be safe at the same time. I believe that the measure that are being taken are unconstitutional and stated to be illegal. The United States has painted an image that we stand for freedom but I think the definition of freedom has changed over time here in America. We are no longer free and the amendment stands to just be a document of words that we state when necessary or alter when needed. Yet it doesn’t stop at just the thin thread program.
. The government even went the extra mile to insert a program referred to as the prison program which includes phone companies such as Verizon, Sprint and numerous of other phone companies. This program also includes search engine companies like Google, Yahoo, Skype, and YouTube. All of these companies are tied the thin thread program to help deliver information regarding the tone of the conversation being held by millions of American. It has been stated by government official that the thin thread system is not used on American yet is used to spy on other countries. They have tried to reassure us that the use of the thin thread is to protect us from having to face such tragedies as we did with 9/11. The measures that they are taking is said to be in a great effort to protect us from the enemies of the United States.
This very program doesn’t make me feel protect but violated. We went from being a country that people flee to- to now as American we question why people come here. We are being misled by our government whom feel that they can take matters into their own hand to determine where or not our amendment should be violated to “protect” us. But the real question is- is this system really protecting us or is it just an excuse to violate our rights? If I had to answer this question I say no due to the fact that we have had bombing that took place after the 9/11. If this system was so advanced and was working properly to catch terrorist then the Boston wouldn’t have taken place now.
