General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: the idiotic attacks on Snowden show exactly how petty and pathetic those folks are [View all]KoKo
(84,711 posts)(The EFF Defended "Democratic Underground" in a Lawsuit from a RW'er trying to charge DU with copyright infringement. And EFF won the case for DU...so you can take them seriously) The site is interactive and the Video is at this link along with more info.
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/how-it-works
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How the NSA's Domestic Spying Program Works
The NSAs domestic spying program, known in official government documents as the Presidents Surveillance Program, ("The Program" was implemented by President George W. Bush shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001. The US Government still considers the Program officially classified, but a tremendous amount of information has been exposed by various whistleblowers, admitted to by government officials during Congressional hearings and with public statements, and reported on in investigations by major newspaper across the country.
Our NSA Domestic Spying Timeline has a full list of important dates, events, and reports, but we also want to explainto the extent we understand itthe full scope of the Program and how the government has implemented it.
In the weeks after 9/11, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct a range of surveillance activities inside the United States, which had been barred by law and agency policy for decades. When the NSAs spying program was first exposed by the New York Times in 2005, President Bush admitted to a small aspect of the programwhat the administration labeled the Terrorist Surveillance Programin which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between 500-1000 people inside the US with suspected connections to Al Qaeda.
But other aspects of the Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.