Communism employed various techniques to place people under surveillance.

As a result, people in Communist countries whispered about their discontentment in life, their distrust of the government, their fear of ostracism, lest they suffer perhaps loss of income, loss of opportunity for themselves and their children due to some slip of the tongue, some unacceptable opinion they might have expressed, some small indiscretion that was picked up by an informant.

The NSA spying is far more intrusive than the spying the Communists did.

Who knows how many people have lost their jobs because of the spying?

We have no way of knowing. And we have no way of knowing how many people could lose a job or be viewed as dangerous by the NSA and your local police who will, if they do not already, get information from the NSA.

Government spying is a waste of time and money. We agree on that. But many people are employed as government spies by the NSA. Since what they do brings no reward to our country, how are they to justify the expense and time spent on it?

Here's how: they will find new, very practical uses for the information they discover -- like informing employers of disgruntled employees.

Truman signed the NSA into law in 1952.

"Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, it was officially formed as the NSA by President Truman in 1952."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

I quote this:

It (The NSA) was very quickly assigned the task of intercepting and collecting "foreign intelligence from foreign communications or foreign electronic signals" and entered into "'a secret arrangement' with ITT, RCA Global Communications, and Western Union" to gather millions of cables sent by Americans to foreign recipients.

Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen Power, Inc. (Macmillan 1976) page 376.

At that time, according to Mintz and Cohen, the NSA was collecting millions of cables "which had been sent by American citizens in the reasonable expectation that they would be kept private." Mintz, Power, Inc., age 376.

The NSA set up a watch list of American citizens with suggestions for inclusion on the list from the Bureau of Narcotics. General Lew Allen, Jr. stated that when he took responsibility foe the NSA in 1973, he got rid of the watch list.

Mintz and Cohen at pages 376-377.

Congress finally ended the collection of the international cables (supposedly) in 1975.

"The NSA has the capability 'to monitor anything' Senator Church . . . warned. That capability 'could be turned around on the American people,' he said. 'And no American would have any privacy left. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capability that the intelligence community has given the Government could enable it to impose total tyranny.'"

Mintz and Cohen, at page 377.

But here we are. The program either did not end or was revived. (Was Cheney's presence in the executive branch in the Nixon and Bush administrations just a coincidence? Did the NSA conduct surveillance on virtually all international communications with the US after it was instructed to stop? I don't know.)

Today, we are more dependent on electronic communications than ever before. Therefore, the NSA activities intrude on more of our communications and into our private lives more than ever. This is particularly true because the collection of our communications is now arguably being done within the US. And the collection of metadata is most definitely being done in the US.

We need to make sure that Congress is exercising adequate oversight on NSA activities. And we need to curtail and open up to the public more about what those activities are.

The secrecy of the NSA programs since the beginning of the agency is quite troubling. Sen. Church was right in 1975 and is right today.

American citizens should, in my opinion, be protected regardless of where they are in the world. But that is my opinion.

The NSA is out of control is my guess.

Some good legislation has been proposed to get the NSA under control. But we tried that before and it did not work. We already have the CIA and the defense intelligence agency. We need to prevent the intelligence system from becoming the enemy of the people. I don't think they are that yet, but the potential is there. And that is a dangerous matter.