Return to Nixonland: How the NSA slipped its leash under Bush and Obama

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Return to Nixonland
How the NSA slipped its leash under Bush and Obama.

BY LISA GRAVES


The documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and other outlets confirm what privacy advocates have been saying for years: The government has secretly turned its most powerful weapons of foreign intelligence surveillance inward on millions of Americans.

How can an ordinary citizen cut through the brush—with the avalanche of complicated, classified materials released, the flurry of political finger-pointing, and the various denials and narrowly crafted dodges? Welcome to a guided tour of the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal. We’ll explore how we got here and what Nixon’s got to do with it.

Who? Me?

The NSA has rebuffed demands by some in Congress for an estimate of the number of Americans whose information has been gathered, stored and searched, but the math is simple. Unless you are a child, a Luddite or a hermit who has never dialed a phone or used the Internet, records of your phone calls and online interactions have been captured by the NSA.

This includes your number and everyone you dial or text, plus how of- ten and how long you talk, as well as your location—although the NSA has claimed it doesn’t actually use the location data. In other words, the NSA has the fact of all your calls with your friends, family, lover(s), bank(s) and doctors’ offices for whatever ails you, along with calls to psychic hotlines or phone sex workers, if that’s your thing. The number of innocent Americans affected: at least 260 million. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15737/return_to_nixonland_nsa_spying/

[hootinholler]

1. Thanks for posting that!

Outstanding article!