Forty years ago the mandate of our National Security Agency was to gather foreign intelligence only; domestic snooping was verboten. In the 21st century President George W. Bush, frightened out of his wits by 9/11, ordered the agency to collect intelligence on Americans. GW2, Barack Obama, I guess is as frightened as GW and as focused on 'protecting us' - whether we are average citizens or suspected terrorists - since he has ordered Verizon to collect information on all calls within the U.S.A. as well as between us and other countries. Every day Verizon collects the numbers of both parties on a
call, location data, call duration, unique
identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the
conversation itself are not covered. Furthermore, the court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public
either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or
the court order itself.
This situation is to continue until July 19, but we really don't know when the order became effective and whether or not it is issued in three-month increments. Also, we do not know whether other companies are collecting intelligence for our own good. The warnings by Senators Wyden and Udall over the past two years probably reflect such actions.
Don't you feel safer now?
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