Goverment

Our country was created on some of the noblest principles our first few legal documents being formed from not only the great minds of our founding fathers but also some of the most renowned philosophers from around the world. Although this is true we also have a deep rooted history in corruption and the violation of our rights. In this essay I will go into detail how American citizens have had their rights violated in three prime examples that embody corruption, Nixon’s water gate scandal, Edward Snowden situation with NSA, and finally the Bill Clinton Iran-Contra scandal. All these events have occurred throughout different time spans but share the same theme, breaking our rights as citizens.

First, we will go into detail about Nixon’s water gate scandal. In the 1970’s where Nixon, the president at the time had been caught not only taping conversations of people in political power he did not trust, also a tape which recorded him paying individuals with fund money to break into the DNC to get information. There is no question about these events being true or false in July of 1973; he had a case for impeachment mounted against him. In court he was required to turn in the audio tapes he had recorded in his office he then, afterwards resigned from his presidency. This is a huge invasion of our rights; the president of the time invaded and used not only the FBI and CIA, but also the IRS to get information on people he did not trust. This is an example of abuse of his presidential power and a betrayal of our democratic justice system. You could even argue that he did what he thought was right for the country to keep it safe, but then you’d have to argue the justification of paying people to break into government building to steal information and causing almost 70 of his closest staff members to be taken to court for aiding in his corruption.

Second, Edward Snowden was a CIA computer professional who discovered that the United States government was spying on citizens. Because of this, Snowden leaked thousands of top secret documents. His actions can be argued against considering Snowden did leak private information he had no authority to leak that was property of the United States government. His involvement also led to a lot of foreign countries using this information against the U.S. Even with this being the case it also brought to the surface a multitude of infringements on our privacy rights. He brought to the public information on surveillance groups run by not only the U.S. but NASA being used to gather information and surveillance. There is also another group, brought to the surface, the Five Eyes intelligence; whom are an alliance composed of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States, all working together gathering surveillance. Consequently because of this, U.S. citizens have a right to be outraged knowing everything they say could be monitored and recorded by their own government.

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