Greenwald With a Look at the Next NSA Bombshell

Emma Roller | Slate Magazine | Reader Supported News | June 30, 2013

Glenn Greenwald previewed a yet-to-be-published document about the National Security Agency surveillance program during a speech at the Socialism 2013 Conference in Chicago on Friday night.

Speaking via Skype (hence the blurry photo above), Greenwald said the Guardian is planning to publish a document showing that new technology allows the National Security Agency to direct one billion cell phone calls every day into its data repositories.

“What we are really talking about here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without its beings stored and monitored by the National Security Agency,” Greenwald told the liberal crowd. “It doesn’t mean they’re listening to every call. It means they’re storing every call and have the capacity to listen to them at any time.”

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Is NSA Illegally Wiretapping the Electronic Transmissions of U.S. Citizens?

Ted Vaill | LA Progressive | June 13, 2013

Should the NSA be allowed to conduct potential warrantless wiretapping of every electronic communication by all U.S. citizens in order to protect them from terrorist threats at home and abroad?  Some on the left say yes; some say no. Some on the right say yes; some say no. It’s complicated.

It is ironic that we cannot adequately protect against deranged U.S. citizens and residents from buying assault weapons and shooting up our schools and malls, but the NSA and its operatives are being allowed potentially to conduct the most intrusive inroads into the privacy of all U. S. citizens and residents.  Why is this?

If the recent disclosure of the activities of NSA contract employee Edward J. Snowden is true, the NSA can potentially access every communication by you and me over the telephone and internet if they decide to do so, without probable cause.  In 10 years, if Richard Nixon II, as President of the U.S., decides to access all electronic records of the persons on his “enemies list”  to see what they have been saying for the past decade or so, he could do so, as the “law” now stands, as interpreted by the U.S. government.

Does the Patriot Act overcome the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or not?

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Details of secret Internet data collection program declassified

Daniel Strauss and Brendan Sasso | The Hill | June 8, 2013

The head of U.S. intelligence released  new details on Saturday about the federal government’s secretive program to  monitor Internet users.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper denied that the program,  called PRISM, “unilaterally” obtains information from the servers of U.S.  Internet companies.

“PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program,” Clapper said  in a statement. “It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate  the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence  information from electronic communication service providers under court  supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence  Surveillance Act (FISA).”

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