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The post 9/11 era is a delicate period in the history of the United States of America. In addition to that, it also represents a controversial period of time, and many voices, including such of American citizens, or you may say especially of the American people have started to raise questions in connection to the way the United States government deals with the problem of terrorists and of the terrorist threats to democracy, freedom and to the security of the USA. The PATRIOT Act is such a subject to both controversies and conspiracy theories and the astonishing amount of access that the US Intel has guaranteed by law to the online correspondence of the Americans and much more than that has started to irritate the people. However, at the moment the things seem to lose some heat, as NSA proceeds in closing data collection program, after a failure to reach an agreement with the US Senate.
While the senior US Intel and governmental organizations like the National Security Agency claim that recording information from telephones, messages and e-mails of the American citizens is a key factor in the battle that United States leads against terrorism world wide, it looks like the US Senate thinks otherwise. For instance, the Senate has recently declined to reauthorize the data collecting program run by the National Security Agency. Even if debates have gone for a long time in connection to this matter, the US Senate has not come up with a solution for the data collecting program in order to make it more acceptable to the American citizens, who claim that such a program is by all means not according to the Constitution of the United States. Nor did the US Senate vote to extend the data collecting program`s authorization beyond May 31.
The senior officials talking on behalf of the most important US Intel agencies, like the NSA, have claimed that not allowing the data collecting program to continue would lead to a gap in the collection of data needed by such agencies in order to protect the American people from the evil terrorists. Most analysts in the field have reckoned that an extension to the authorization for the data collecting program as it is by now is unlikely. They have added that the only viable option would be to reform the program in order to make it less privacy violating.
Image Source: Engadget
