Case study: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act$$

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of $1978($FISA$)$ provides for judicial and congressional oversight of the government$$s covert surveillance of foreign governments and their agents. The law allows the president to authorize electronic surveillance of foreign nationals for up to one year without a court order, as long as there is little chance that the surveillance will reveal the contents of communications with any US citizens. If communications with US citizens are to be monitored, the government must get a court order from the FISA Court.

FISA was amended by the Protect America Act of $2007.$ This act allows the US government to wiretap communications beginning or ending in a foreign country without oversight by the FISA Court.

In June $2013,$ the British newspaper The Guardian disclosed it had received a top$-$secret document outlining how the National Security Agency had obtained direct access to the servers at Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and other Internet giants. $($Edward Snowden, a former employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, provided the document.$)$ The secret program, called PRISM, enables the NSA to access stored information such as email messages and monitor live communications such as Skype and PalTalk conversations without first obtaining search warrants when the NSA reasonably suspects that the person being investigated is a foreigner outside the United States. According to the secret document, the NSA gained access to the servers of Microsoft in $2007,$ Yahoo in $2008,$ Google and Facebook in $2009,$ YouTube in $2010,$ Skype and AOL in $2011,$ and Apple in $2012.$

All the companies that responded to a request for information by the Guardian denied any knowledge of the PRISM program. The Obama administration provided the following statement: $$The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to a collection of communications pursuant to Section $702$ of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen, or any person located within the United States$.$

Review the following case studies and determine the problem.

If you were in government leadership$$and were fully informed of this situation before it got to the newspaper. $$How would you have addressed this matter as a government leader?

Who is morally responsible for this within the United States Government?

Be able to explain in writing the ethical theories of Kantianism and Utilitarianism approaches in addressing the problem.