The Government Is Watching You

The National Security Agency’s admitted intercepts of private telephone calls and e-mails is broader than previously acknowledged.

Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Democrat Rush Holt of New Jersey (r), Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, says, “Some actions are so flagrant they can’t be accidental.”

The N.S.A. is believed to have gone beyond legal boundaries designed to protect Americans in about 8 to 10 separate court orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to three intelligence officials who spoke anonymously because disclosing such information is illegal. Because each court order could single out hundreds or even thousands of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, the number of individual communications that were improperly collected could number in the millions, officials said.

One analyst was investigated beacuse he was reading the personal emails of former President Clinton.  And I love the term they’re using to describe getting unauthorized data: “overcollection.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.