It is because I agree with Thomas Jeffersons statement, The care of human life and happiness,

and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government, that I affirm the
resolution, Resolved: The United States ought to prioritize the pursuit of national security
objectives above the digital privacy of its citizens.
To start, I present two observations:
First, privacy, as a theory, does not truly exist. If we were to define privacy as dictionary.com
does, namely, the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in ones private life or
affairs, we can see that privacy can in no way exist because its impossible to prevent everyone
from disturbance in ones personal affairs. Devin Coldewey from NBC News reports in August
of 2013 that an end-to-end secure transaction is never completely obscured because metadata
is used to navigate data through the Internet, but that metadata remains unprotected because it
must be available to the Internet so its delivery address can be made known. Every digital action
taken is recorded somewhere because every action taken is interacting with another digital entity,
so even the apparent privacy of technology use is just a faade. http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/perfectprivacy-internet-communication-doesnt-exist-f6C10962853

Second,

My value for todays round is Morality, and my value criterion is the minimization of suffering.
By affirming the resolution, I will show to you that the pursuit of national security objectives
best minimizes suffering when compared to the protection of digital privacy, thus proving that
the resolution is Moral. I have 4 contentions to prove this statement:

Contention 1: National security is a prerequisite to digital privacy

Because national security can be loosely define by the MacMillian Dictionary as the protection
or the safety of a countrys secrets and its citizens, (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/nationalsecurity) the pursuit of national security objectives is the pursuit for the safety of US citizens. And
nothing can be prioritized above that, because without the safety of US citizens, nothing else
matters. If citizens arent safe from external threats, there can be no digital privacy because one
is dependent on the other. Digital privacy cannot exist if citizens are not safe enough, or, for that
matter, alive, to require digital privacy. So, because life is a prerequisite to every other human
right, it must always be prioritized.

Contention 2: Terrorism is the biggest threat to national security, so prioritizing digital privacy
over national security will make terrorism a back-burner problem that will only be expedited.
The Guardian reported in December of 2013, theguardian.com, 1 December 2013, Feinstein and Rogers say
terrorism threat to US is increasing, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/01/feinstein-rogers-terrorism-threat-intelligence-committees

The terrorism threat against the United States is increasing and Americans are not as safe
as they were a year or two ago, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees
said on Sunday.
Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers appeared together on CNN's State of the Union, on the day that al-Qaida's US

al-Qaida groups had changed their means

of communication as a result of leaks about US surveillance programs, making it harder to
detect potential plots in the early planning stages.
spokesperson called for attacks on US interests around the world. Rogers said

"We're fighting amongst ourselves here in this country about the role of our intelligence
community that it is having an impact on our ability to stop what is a growing number of
threats," he said. "And so we've got to shake ourselves out of this pretty soon and understand that our intelligence services
are not the bad guys."
Feinstein, a California Democrat, said there were more terrorist groups than ever, with more sophisticated and hard-to-detect bombs. She said:
"There is huge malevolence out there."
Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, said there was enormous pressure on US intelligence services "to get it right, to prevent an attack" and said
that job was getting more difficult because al-Qaida is changing, with more affiliates around the world. He said groups that once operated
independently had now joined with al-Qaida.
Rogers also said terrorists were adopting the idea that "maybe smaller events are OK" and still might achieve their goals. "That makes it
exponentially harder for our intelligence services to stop an event like that from happening," he said.

Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security reports in May of 2013,

Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology, Based at the University of Maryland, Annex of Statistical Information, Country
Reports on Terrorism 2012, May 2013, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/210288.pdf

In 2012 [alone], a total of 6,771 terrorist attacks occurred worldwide, resulting in more than
11,000 deaths and more than 21,600 injuries. In addition, more than 1,280 people were
kidnapped or taken hostage. In this report we describe patterns of worldwide terrorist activity with respect to changes during the
year, geographic concentration, casualties, perpetrator organizations, tactics, weapons, and targets.

If national security is not prioritized, these thousands of lives each year will exponentially
increase.

Contention 3: Sleeper cells are the biggest threat to US national security, and prioritizing digital
privacy would only increase their ability to operate within US borders.
World Net Daily reported in April of 2005, WND, 4/18/2005, Sleep Cells in America, World Net Daily,
http://www.wnd.com/2005/04/29860/

A sleeper cell
like the 19 terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon may be
living with us right now, unseen, below the surface, ready to strike when the order is given. It is frightening to think that people
Most likely a nuclear terrorist attack in a major U.S. city would come just as 9-11 came unannounced and unanticipated.

who are living among us now as apparently ordinary citizens are secretly planning when, where and how to explode a nuclear weapon in one of
our major cities.
Why sleeper-cell terrorists are hard to find

America has porous borders. One problem is that those borders are so large. Our northern border with Canada
stretches more than 4,000 miles; our southern border with Mexico runs about half that length, some 2,000
miles. The second problem is that long stretches of both borders are unpopulated and not regularly
patrolled, except possibly by aircraft from above.
Every year, nearly 300,000 immigrants are admitted from Canada, a country that typically does not detain those claiming refuge status. Every

Government
authorities estimate that there are somewhere between 9 million and 12 million illegal
aliens living today in the continental United States. In reality [though], there is no way of knowing
the precise number. Most illegal immigrants live quiet lives in ethnic communities where no one knows exactly how they got into the
year some 10,000 immigrants with questionable backgrounds disappear into Canadas ethnic communities.

country.
U.S. authorities

have no doubt there are terrorist sleeper cells in our midst. In 2002 the FBI
concluded in an internal review that somewhere between 50 and 100 Hamas and Hezbollah
operatives had infiltrated into America. The FBI believed these operatives were in America working on fund-raising and
logistics, and they had received terrorist and military training from Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East, giving Hamas and Hezbollah
the capability of launching terrorist strikes.

In 2004 the FBI suggested that al-Qaida sleeper cells were believed to be operating in 40 states,
awaiting orders and funding for new attacks on U.S. soil. The bureau believed that these agents were
being funded by millions of dollars solicited by an extensive network of bogus charities and
foundations, with the cells using Muslim communities as cover and places to raise cash and recruit sympathizers. U.S. lawenforcement authorities claimed to have satellite photos and communications intercepts that documented between 60 and 70 camps in Pakistan-

Still, finding sleeper-cell terrorists is very difficult, especially with

the presumption of innocence and extensive legal rights and civil liberties granted suspects
under U.S. law.
occupied Kashmir and in Pakistan.

Scott Wheeler, an investigative reporter writing on the Internet, demonstrated the problems inherent in uncovering terrorist sleeper cells. Wheeler became interested in the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), a group
identified as a Muslim think tank based in Springfield, Va. He quoted a George Mason University professor who claimed that the UASR was a front organization for a terrorist group, a phony organization that was part of a shell
game of international terrorism. Wheeler noted that many meetings at the UASR started at midnight, with participants emerging to use their cell phones in the parking lot, as if to avoid government counterterrorism units that may
have hidden listening devices inside the building.
As Wheeler probed, he found that the UASR had questionable connections. The group was founded by Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas operative discussed in the previous chapter, a Palestinian by birth who is now a fugitive living in
Syria under federal indictment for his involvement in the Holy Land Foundation Islamic charity scandal. According to a report in the Washington Post, Marzook participated in a real-estate scheme designed to defraud affluent
Muslims into buying development homes in Prince George County, just 10 miles from the White House, with the result that the development company partly owned by Marzook went bankrupt while all proceeds were siphoned off to
fund Hamas terrorist activities overseas.
Wheeler was also suspicious that the UASRs current head, Ahmed Yousef, had ties to Hamas. Yousef gave an interview to a Middle Eastern magazine in which he claimed that 9-11 was a Jewish plot: No one could have captured
the pictures [of the 9-11 attacks] so perfectly except for the cameras in the hands of several Mossad agents, who were near the scene of events and succeeded in filming the scene so that it will always serve Zionism to remind the
world of the Arabs and Muslims crimes against America. Why would Mossad do this? As Yousef explained, Mossad had a grand scheme and right-wing forces may have participated in it, and evangelical Christians agreed to it.
All of them agreed that this scheme should be carried out in this way to push America into war.
Yet inevitably those suspected of being sleeper-cell terrorists hire attorneys who claim that their clients are being discriminated against simply because they are Muslims. Wheeler had uncovered interesting circumstantial evidence, but
he did not have enough proof to support the claim that the UASR was a terrorist front organization.
Even with the extensive tools allowed law-enforcement officials under legislation passed since 9-11, legal barriers still impede law-enforcement efforts to find sleeper-cell terrorists. Consider the case of Dhiren Barot, a suspected alQaida operative who spent time in New Jersey in 2000 and 2001. The FBI was trying to track whether any of Barots associates remained in the area when a federal court ruled that a key investigative tool of the FBI was no longer
available. Specifically, the court decided that the use of a special subpoena known as a national security letter was unconstitutional. When the FBI tracked companies that Barot had been involved with through e-mails, the court ruling
prohibited the agents from getting key customer information without judicial review.
Nor do the Patriot Act powers solve the problem. Federal terrorist investigators still must play by rules, and the rules as interpreted by the courts still typically specify that the suspects rights are paramount. Our system of criminal
laws is designed to err on the side of presumed innocence.
In a society as open as ours, there are hundreds of mosques in which zealous preaching could convey a message intended to convert or recruit terrorist prospects, as well as hundreds of Muslim charities whose fund-raising purposes
may be questioned as illegitimate. Then there are religious and ethnic support organizations whose purposes might be suspect. But after decades of liberal court rulings dealing with civil rights, any attempt at religious or ethnic
profiling is an unacceptable practice for law-enforcement officers. Profiling is even frowned upon even when marginally suggested by editorialists or pundits.

During the 2004 presidential campaign Vice President Dick Cheney made comments that suggested the administration was taking the threat of

The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of

terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever been used
nuclear terrorism seriously: [However]

against us biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to

be able to threaten the lives of

hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Sleeper cells have been contained in the past, but with an increase in digital privacy and its
prioritization over national security, these sleeper cells will have more ability to remain secret
and hundreds of thousands of American lives would be at risk. In the past decade alone, 12
planned terrorist attacks have been known to have been rendered unsuccessful, but with a deprioritization of national security, the sleeper cells that attempted these attacks will be more
successful.
(2004 Financial Buildings Plot, 2006 Transatlantic aircraft plot, 2006 Hudson River bomb plot, 2007 Fort Dix attack plot, 2007 JFK International
Airport attack plot, 2009 Bronx terrorism plot, 2009 NY Subway plot, 2009 Christmas Bomb plot, 2010 Times Square car bombing plot, 2010
cargo plane bomb plot, 2010 Portland car bomb plot, 2011 Manhattan terrorism plot)

Contention 4: Theres no reason to protect privacy.

Regardless of the fact that US surveillance laws outlined in the Patriot Act dictate that US
surveillance is limited to suspected terrorists, many believe that the US government spies on
every one of its citizens. While this is untrue, even if it was, it wouldnt matter, because theres
no benefit to having privacy apart from comfort. Even if the government was spying on all of its
citizens, do you think they really care what the Jones had for dinner last week? If the goal is to
detect terrorists, anything unscrupulous would be immediately discarded. And even if, in the
process, the government did learn what the Jones had for dinner last week, it would be worth the
potential benefit of uncovering a terrorist plot. Privacy has no benefit, it doesnt matter. What
does matter, is the lives of US citizens, and for that reason I urge you to affirm.