Glenn Greenwald Calls Obama's NSA Speech A Publicity Stunt

[JDPriestly]

91. OK. Let's say you organize a protest about

some issue, maybe war, maybe homelessness, or on the other side, maybe abortion or no prayer in school. Whether you are liberal or conservative, the Constitution guarantees you the right to freedom of association and freedom of speech as well as freedom to petition the government.

Let's say that you compile a list of people who agree with you on the issue. You send an e-mail to each of the people on the list. The NSA collects the metadata, in other words it collects the e-mail addresses of all the people with whom you communicate electronically about the protest you are organizing.

Without you knowing it, one of the parties on your list has participated in similar protests in the past and is considered by the NSA to be a person they want to watch. They notice that name on your list of e-mails and pretty soon you are also on the NSA watch list. The NSA has admitted that if they suspect someone of being a "terrorist" (which is not clearly defined anywhere and who knows who is considered to be or not be a "terrorist" suspect), they not only collect data on that person but on people who are connected to that person.

Do you see now how your organizing something and sending e-mails to people including some you really don't know could get you on an NSA list. Do you understand how many problems could arise for an absolutely innocent person simply because their e-mail list includes the name of someone who corresponds with someone who is an NSA surveillance target?

Just sending a lot of e-mails or having a lot of Facebook friends could make you a target if your opinions on issues are not what the NSA thinks is politically correct.

This may sound exaggerated, but it is not. And if the NSA dragnet is so broad that they are capturing information and maybe even content from the phones of leaders of our allies like Angela Merkel of Germany, how broad do you think that dragnet might be or could become in the US?

The NSA surveillance and in particular the wide-ranging collection of our metadata is a threat to our democracy and our freedoms of speech, association, religion to say nothing of the Fourth Amendment and the rights that guarantee a public and fair trial. The NSA's excesses are to be condemned and ended.