While measures to limit free speech often raise questions about First Amendment Rights, in the dangerous world we live in today personal freedoms should not be prioritized over safety. If all online speech was connected to one's real identity, enforcers would be able to identify potential terror threats before they happen since attacks can be coordinated online. In order to prevent future terrorist attacks, at any degree of severity, anonymous speech online should be limited. Government surveillance of the internet will raise privacy concerns, but it could possibly prevent people from planning attacks
The Fourth Amendment of the constitution guarantees the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and is often viewed as protecting our right to privacy. However, this right to privacy has been under surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). According to ABC News, the NSA has been able to prevent more than 50 potential terrorist attacks since 9/11. Two controversial programs set forth have tracked more than a billion phone calls and vast swaths of internet data each day.
NSA technicians have installed intercept stations at key junction points, or switches, throughout the country. These switches are located in large windowless buildings owned by the major telecommunication companies and control the domestic internet traffic flow across the nation. A fiber optic splitter is placed on the incoming communication lines and routes the traffic to an NSA intercept station for processing.
A recent controversy over privacy rights occurred as Facebook is experiencing its worst privacy scandal in years. According to Barbara Ortutay of Boston Globe, Facebook users have experienced allegations that a Trump-affiliated data mining firm, Cambridge Analytica, used ill-gotten data from 87 million of users to try to influence elections. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now testifying in court while Facebook unveiled a new privacy policy that aims to explain the data it gathers on users more clearly, yet doesn't actually change what it collects and shares. Facebook added a section explaining that it collects users contact information if they choose to ''upload, sync or import'' this to the service. This may include users' address books on their phones, as well as their call logs and text histories. The new policy says Facebook may use this data to help ''you and others find people you may know.''
When creating a social media account, such as a Facebook account, a verification email must be entered in order to access the content of the website. These emails can be forged from websites, such as Google or Yahoo, that offers email services. To restrict additional content, some websites also require a user to be a certain age in order to access their content, which can also be forged. Many of these anonymous accounts can then be used to "troll" others, post inappropriate comments, hack users, or plan a terrorist attack. Having social media sources being verified can help prevent situations similar to these. Removing the anonymity from online accounts and linking them to real identities will allow the government to search threats easier and put a stop to these problems before they occur.
One situation where removing anonymity from online accounts could have prevented an attack is the Parkland High School Shooting in Florida. An internet tip reported to the FBI in September 2017 highlighted a YouTube account named "Nikolas Cruz," which had posted the comment "I am going to be a professional school shooter" in response to a video. This account could not be linked to the Parkland assailant, Nikolas Cruz, due to the fact that this anonymous account was unable to be traced.
Government surveillance should require every profile to be approved by the government and looked over before the account is eligible for use. The United States could propose a similar legislation that was recently passed in China. This law requires all Internet services such as data centers, Internet Service Providers, Content Delivery Networks and Virtual Private Networks are mandated to have pre-approval from the government to operate. According to Matthew Hughes of the tech news site The Next Web, The Department of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that "China's internet connection service market has signs of disordered development that require urgent regulation and governance." By causing accounts and web servers to be verified, it will allow for all comments to be traced back to the publisher to prevent an attack, whether it is a school shooting or an Al-Qaeda attack.
