We have arrived. 'What An NSA Domestic Spying Operation Looks Like'

[seafan]

This, from PBS yesterday:



What An NSA Domestic Spying Operation Looks Like

June 6, 2013, 12:40 pm ET by Jason M. Breslow

Millions of Verizon customers awoke Thursday to learn that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting their telephone records, under a classified court order granted to the Obama administration in April.

According to a report by The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, the order requires Verizon, one of the nation’s largest telecommunications providers, to give the NSA information on calls from within the U.S., as well as between the U.S. and foreign countries on an “ongoing, daily basis.” That information includes the numbers of both parties on a call, location data and the time and duration of the conversation, according to The Guardian.

The report has brought flashbacks of the highly controversial domestic surveillance program first initiated by the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The inside story of that effort was uncovered in 2002 by Mark Klein, a former internet technician with AT&T. In the following clip from the FRONTLINE film Spying On The Home Front, Klein describes how he first pieced together that the NSA was building a massive top-secret data mining operation in a nondescript room just steps from his desk. Eventually, he told FRONTLINE, “it all clicked together to me … ‘Oh, that’s what they’re doing. This is a spy apparatus.’”

.....

But when we first noticed this in 2006, we were derided as conspiracy theorists.


Dorothy, we are not in Kansas any more.

[Enthusiast]

1. Advocates of democracy better watch their back.

Advocates of Fascism need not be concerned.

[No Elephants]

3. Which advocates of democracy, friend? A representative sample of the Democratic Party

is posting at DU3. I have not looked as to this particular issue, but I would bet my home that a majority of them are rationalizing this.

[No Elephants]

2. Telephone calls, TV, credit cards and internet.

But, it's only to keep us safe and it's all Constitutional. We have Obama's word on both those points.

Who needed the Fourth Amendment, anyway? And who pays attention to the Clause in the Constitution that tells us the only legal way in which the Constitution may be amended? If the Executive Branch is done with one of the top ten rights in the Bill of Rights, it's a dead letter.

Meanwhile, not one, but two, sovereign nations told the FBI to watch out for the elder of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers and the FBI could not be arsed to watch out for him because, after all, the FBI has too much data to pay attention every time two sovereign nations point out the same individual and do so more than once.

[No Elephants]

4. BTW, Kevin Gosztola

at firedoglake.com has been doing literally award-worthy coverage of whistleblowers, including the Manning trial.

If I could, I'd give him a Pulitzer and y'all should know how picky I am, especially about news coverage.

From his photo, he looks relatively young, too.

He's been on Democracy Now with Goodman, for his reporting of the Manning trial, Democracy Now also being one of the few sources I admire to any degree.

[Enthusiast]

5. Democracy Now

is above reproach. It is simply the best.

[No Elephants]

6. Luckily, someone gets it onto our local access cable channel.