The Internet is wonderful; it can be a great source of entertainment, with fun videos, games and online communities that have similar interests. It can be an amazing tool for learning, with large amounts of free information and how-to videos. The Internet is also great for replacing obsolete ways of communicating and staying in touch with family and friends, with email and social networking sites. Sharing information has been made easier than ever; as a result, information gathering has been made much easier. When there's so much information out there you'd have to be crazy not to accumulate as much of it as possible, right? This obviously refers to the NSA (National Security Agency) of the United States. The NSA appears to have a hoarding complex and no regard for the privacy of anyone on the Internet, including US citizens. Having an agency dedicated to collecting information on foreign nationals is bad for foreign relations; some countries have even started to take action. Having the same agency also spy on its own citizens is tremendously worse for internal relations, protests and demonstrations have been organized to raise awareness and attempt to put an end to these heinous acts of invasion of privacy. What's worse is that the US government has actively tried to pass laws and acts, in secret courts, to facilitate the collection of all this data. The government tries to justify these acts of invasion of privacy by claiming that it is actually done for the protection of society. If there was any benefit to this mass data collection, it would be moot compared to all the illegal activity and harm that spying causes to virtually everyone. At this point... middle of paper... you don't want to be spied on. The fact that there is so little benefit to what the NSA is doing begs the question: Is the privacy of everyone on the Internet worth the slim chance that all this data collection could uncover a terrorist plan before it is carried out and prevent its realization? ? We are unintentionally sacrificing our privacy for this effort, we have all of our data collected and stored, from public statuses on Facebook to private emails you send and even location data, like where you are every minute of the day. It's like having someone follow you around all day, every day, looking over your shoulder when you're on the computer or phone, writing down everything you write, and their only reason for doing so is because they can. The NSA has the resources to collect everything, find what's relevant later, and that's exactly what it does.