Free Republic

It's becoming increasingly difficult to give the government the benefit of the doubt in regards to dragnet domestic surveillance. Even before Glenn Greenwald published a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems and interviewed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, there were credible reports that the NSA was intercepting U.S. communications. The most significant of those occurred in July, when the court that was established to "hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance," called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction...

We know the IRS was used to help get Obama re-elected and it is beginning to look like the State Dept. and others were also used to help him get re-elected. What about the NSA???

Young people are more Democratic and pro-Obama – but they're even more pro-liberty. The GOP should seize this chance.You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Republican party has a problem with the millennial generation. Americans born after 1980 voted by some 25pt for President Obama over Mitt Romney, while the rest of the electorate narrowly supported the Republican candidate. It's my view that Republicans can do little to attract most Millennials – but privacy may be the exception. Our Guardian poll conducted by Public Policy Polling indicated that Democrats were more supportive of President Obama's...

America is truly doomed. At least the idea of America, that experiment in self-government and liberty. I say that not because of the spying revelations, which came hard on the heels of the ongoing Benghazi, IRS and AP/Fox News scandals. That government is spying on the people does not surprise me. I have long maintained — and have been called paranoid for it — that the government is monitoring every phone call and digital communication in this country. That is why I like to use encryption technology when emailing, though very few of my correspondents have the same security sense...

White House doesn't know where Snowden is By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 6/16/13 9:48 AM EDT White House chief of staff Denis McDonough doesn't know where NSA leaker Edward Snowden is, but is suspicious of some of the claims the former government contractor has made. Citing the ongoing investigation, McDonough wouldn't talk about his or President Barack Obama's views of Snowden, though he did tell host Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he's unsure of whether Snowden is still in Hong Kong. "I don’t know where he is," McDonough said. He also suggested he has some doubts...

While National Security Agency’s harvesting of telephone data is often defended as a necessary component of post-9/11 national security, old court documents claim the spy agency was putting such a program into place months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In court papers filed during his 2007 insider trading trial, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio claimed that Denver-based Qwest was denied lucrative NSA contracts he believed to be worth $50-$100 million, after Nacchio refused to involve Qwest in a secret NSA program that he thought would be illegal. Subsequent reporting at the time revealed that it was a domestic...