NSA Had Access to All Our Data

In this article from the New York Times, there's reports that the NSA has had access to many times more information than the Bush administration had let on.

Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the New York Times writes:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

Let me break this down for you. This nation's telecommunications switches carry most of the data coming in and out of this country, including foreign communications that are not too or from anyone in this country.

If the NSA tapped those switches it means this:

• If you made a phone call or possibly an email since January 6th 2002, the NSA had access to it.
• If that phone call or email were destined for outside this country, it was recorded.
• If anyone from outside this country called or emailed you, it was recorded.

All without a warrant

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

This is what the Bush Administration is doing to "protect" the civilians. By denying civil liberties and searching EVERY piece of data going in and out of this country and hoping to find something.

Next time you make an international call be sure to say hi to the NSA for me. I'm sure they probably think I'm a threat.

The full article can be found here:
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times