Posted on 06/06/2013 5:53:04 PM PDT by kristinn
The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities.
The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers.
The agency is using its secret access to the communications of millions of Americans to target possible terrorists, said people familiar with the effort.
The NSA's efforts have become institutionalizedyet not so well known to the publicunder laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most members of Congress defended them Thursday as a way to root out terrorism, but civil-liberties groups decried the program.
"Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who added that the phone-data program has "worked to prevent'' terrorist attacks.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said the program is lawful and that it must be renewed by Congress every three months. She said the revelation about Verizon, reported by the London-based newspaper the Guardian, seemed to coincide with its latest renewal.
Civil-liberties advocates slammed the NSA's actions. "The most recent surveillance program is breathtaking. It shows absolutely no effort to narrow or tailor the surveillance of citizens," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University.
The arrangement with the country's three largest phone companies means that every time the majority of Americans makes a call, NSA
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping!
New info in this piece. .Sprint and AT&T included with Verizon.
I wonder how all this helped prevent the Boston bombing...? Oh wait,,it didn’t
5.56mm
They should just throw all that stuff out. Tamerlan and Jokar eluded it without even trying.
Yeah! If the NSA has been gathering every bit of information about us, where’s Traitorobama’s real birth certificate?
(Satan’s daughter must have a copy.)
This all just torques the heck outta me.
We’ve totally lost our gubbamint.
Defund or shut up.
Your obedient servant,
BilltheDrill
At this point, I’m pretty sure there is an NSA bug in my toilet pipe.
At this point, I’m pretty sure there is an NSA bug in my toilet pipe.
We’re in a crisis like I’ve never seen.
Joe Nacchio
Welcome to Communism.
Monitoring the activities of 300,000,000 domestic terrorists is quite an undertaking.
Americans still feel like they have too much to lose.
This almost feels like these people are just eggin the people to react.
So they are tracking my credit card purchases on line? I hope they enjoy learning about that new spatula I got from Amazon to replace the one my blender destroyed.
“Im pretty sure there is an NSA bug in my toilet pipe.”
Oh please let there be one in mine!! I give them about a pound of new intelligence on me every morning!!
I hope they enjoy analyzing it!!
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