New reports expose extensive illegal spying by US government

Following an initial report by the New York Times on December 15, Bush acknowledged that he issued a Presidential order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on some calls made to or from the United States without obtaining the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In issuing the order, the administration acted in violation of US law, which requires the NSA to receive a court warrant to monitor any communications involving individuals within the United States.

The administration initially stated that the spying was limited to a relatively small number of individuals connected to Al Qaeda, and that no entirely domestic communications were spied on. Subsequent repots have undermined both of these claims.

Citing unnamed current and former government officials, the Times reported on December 24 that “the volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged ... It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries.”

Much of the communications that go in and out of the United States pass through switches that relay large amounts of data and are controlled by a handful of private corporations. The officials said that this data was turned over to the NSA, which was able to use various search, or “data mining” techniques to find information it was looking for. Essentially, this means that the government was not spying on a few hundred individuals at a time, as had been previously reported, but potentially thousands or millions of separate communications, including phone conversations and emails.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/spy-d31.shtml