NSA Spying

Message pad created by PosseComment@US and posted here
As many are aware, the US Government, with the assistance of many of the major telecommunications companies have been participating in illegal secret surveillance of American citizens' phone calls since 2001. In 2005, the New York Times was the first to break the story and the President admitted at least one portion of it: warrantless surveillance of Americans who were "believed" to be communicating with terrorists. Unfortunately, as has recently become clear, these government surveillance programs were in fact used to monitor the private communications of people.

The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are involved in litigation regarding the NSA. The ACLU posted this update recently:

Two former military intercept operators — the people who actually intercept, monitor, and collect international telephone and email communications — told ABC News that "hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home." The operators worked for the National Security Agency ("NSA"), the spy agency chiefly responsible for international surveillance. They report that NSA routinely listened in on the innocent, and sometimes intimate, conversations of Americans abroad. There were apparently no effective procedures in place to filter out these kinds of communications.

The NSA program went beyond invading the personal privacy of Americans abroad (and their friends and family on the other end of the line). NSA also directed its surveillance powers at well-established humanitarian organizations, like the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. As one whistleblower told ABC News: "We knew they were working for these aid organizations. . . . And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them."

Hmmmm...you never know who is listening.