Free Republic

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become ALMOST A PARALLEL SUPREME COURT, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home. “Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green. “It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in...

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency run its pervasive domestic spying apparatus... Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S. citizen without warrants under the code-name Stellar Wind.

The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far beyond that does the feds' reach really go, though? The attacks of September 11, 2001 were instrumental in getting the US government to establish counterterrorism agencies to curb future tragedies. Some officials say that they haven't stopped there, though, and are spying on everyone in America. Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the government is going beyond what most of America thinks they do in order to keep...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday that he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to investigate President Bush's decision to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor the phone calls from suspected terrorists operating abroad. Asked about former Vice President Al Gore's demand yesterday that the Justice Department appoint a "Spygate" special counsel, Gonzales told the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" that there was no basis to believe any laws were broken by the NSA program. "We firmly believe that this program is perfectly lawful," Gonzales explained. "The president has legal authority to authorize these kinds of...

The ACLU had announced on Tuesday, November 16, 1999 that it will create a website called "www.echelonwatch.org". This website would chronicle all uses of the Planetary Evesdropping system used by the United States to monitor Phone Calls, Cell Phones, Satellite Communications around the world. This is the "NSA Evesdropping" system that's in the news today. The ACLU had an extensive Library of documents, archives, news articles, links to congressional testimony and was the place to go for this information. That is until now. The ACLU is deleting all this information off the website. It had chronicled all this information and...