The biggest question resounding from Edward Snowden’s recent NSA leaks begs whether our rights and privacies are being infringed upon as American citizens, Internet users and communicators.

President Barack Obama addressed us saying that “nobody is listening to (our) telephone calls.”  But while our President’s words may be sufficient enough to convince some Americans that the desired privacy of our conversations are being upheld and that content is not being collected, many aren’t so quick to follow. 

It’s one situation to know that our data is being collected; it’s another to know what’s being done with it. 

Internet and cell phone use make us part of — and reflect — the global economy. Within these technologies, the lines between what is corporate, public and personal become blurry, especially as we operate within social networks and email. We effortlessly create copies of our own thoughts and lives by operating our Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Instagram accounts, and Gmail messages. The traces we leave using these commodities are often searchable; they are unlike private, in-person conversations. 

The Internet may not be “real life,” but it can be monitored with ease and with the kind of opaqueness that physical observations of people cannot. Is it ignorant for people to operate under the assumption that what they do on the Internet and on their phones is entirely private?

The answer is ambiguous. The Internet’s internationalism has catalyzed worldwide commodity trading; it has deeply changed human communication. Therefore, the civil liberties that Americans are entitled to while engaging in everyday, face-to-face interactions must now extend to the intangible realms of the Internet. Attention must be drawn toward the panic and sense of violation that many Americans felt upon hearing of Edward Snowden’s leaks. If our individual rights are not covered on the Internet, this sense of surveillance could thwart American — and potentially global — consciousness. 

In the fight against terror, the need for government surveillance is certainly justified. Yet, the question of how the government can work to oversee only a select and suspicious few, in lieu of looking to what vast numbers of citizens are doing, remains unclear. It would be naive to suggest that we live in an unthreatening world. Likewise, we cannot expect the Internet to be without regulation; but as it becomes a reflection of our world, we must consider how the relationship between the two reads legally. 

As we look to what is to come of this leak, and to the fate of Snowden, the United States has every reason to prosecute him. But the United States also needs to consider how the world is evolving. We need to think about how the changing use of the Internet and cell phones fits into the lives of thinking, writing, speaking and self-expressing Americans who use traceable technologies. 

The Fourth Amendment needs extension — or at least acknowledgement — over the paperless, but nonetheless written documentation of our lives on the Internet. Citizens’ rights “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” as the Fourth Amendment states, needs to find a way to apply to cyberspace. When the Internet begins reflecting our “persons and papers,” we need to be adequately protected. We desire some privacy in our online lives.

As long as the NSA and the U.S. government respect those rights and begin to create litigation to ensure the respect of civil liberties online and over the phone, the U.S. government should not be criticized for its security practices.