Evaluating an Argument

The newspaper article I came up with is an editorial from The Washington Post titled “The NSA must disclose more to make it case”. This article touches on a sensitive topic which has spark out a debate across the country. The article says “the bulk collection of phone ‘metadata’ and call records is a potentially powerful tool that could reveal sensitive facts about nearly every American’s life if abused, and according to the article this practice was disclosed by the NSA’s former contractor Edward Snowden who demands extensive checks to guard against misuse (Washington Post, 2013).
According to the article, a taskforce was formed and was to submit a report to President Obama, in their report they would like to see a higher legal standard applied in accessing phone records by government. The report proposed an end to the bulk collection of records, calling on the NSA to approach phone companies and ask for records as when investigators need them on a case-by-case basis. Government officials seemed to open in considering this arrangement but voiced concern that investigative speed may be lost in the interest of privacy protection (Washington Post, 2013)
The article argued that for the NSA to make a strong case, it must demonstrate the national security benefit to the program. It further did mentioned of the U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon who issued an injunction to prevent the bulk collection of the data. His actions gives the government a chance to appeal and he ruled that the NSA phone-records database collection is likely in violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable searches (Washington Post, 2013).
The judge also rejected the applicability of the 1979 ruling that offered no constitutional protection to metadata, with the argument that Americans’ “relationship with technology has changed drastically now that cellphones and tablet computers are so ubiquitous and powerful and that the government ability to collect...