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Snowden said claims the programs are secure are not true.
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of those sensor networks and the authority that that analyst is empowered with," Snowden said, in accompanying video on the Guardian's website. "Not all analysts have the power to target anything. But I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."
Its job is to use the world's most cutting edge supercomputers and arguably the largest database storage sites to crunch and sift through immense amounts of data. The information analyzed might be stolen from a foreign official's laptop by a CIA officer overseas, intercepted by a Navy spy plane flying off the Chinese coast, or, as Americans found out this past week, gathered from U.S. phone records.
Code-breakers at the Fort Meade, Md.-based NSA use software to search for keywords in the emails or patterns in the phone numbers that might link known terrorist targets with possible new suspects. They farm out that information to the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and to law enforcement, depending on who has the right to access which type of information, acting as gatekeeper, and they say, guardian of the nation's civil liberties as well as its security.
The super-secret agency is under the spotlight after last week's revelations of two surveillance programs. One involves the sweeping collection of hundreds of millions of phone records of U.S. customers. The second collects the audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas and probably some Americans in the process who use major Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.
NSA was founded in 1952. Only years later was the NSA publicly acknowledged, which explains its nickname, "No Such Agency." According to its website, NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans. It is supposed to use its formidable technology to "gather information that America's adversaries wish to keep secret," and to "protect America's vital national security information and systems from theft or damage by others," as well as enabling "network warfare, a military operation," that includes offensive cyberoperations against U.S. adversaries.
The agency also includes the Central Security Service, the military arm of code-breakers who work jointly with the agency. The two services have their headquarters on a compound that's technically part of Fort Meade, though it's slightly set apart from the 5,000-acre Army base. Visible from a main highway, the tightly guarded compound requires the highest of clearances to enter and is equipped with electronic means to ward off an attack by hackers. Other NSA facilities in Georgia, Texas, Colorado and Hawaii duplicate much of the headquarters' brain and computer power in case a terrorist attack takes out the main location, though each one focuses on a different part of the globe.
A new million-square-foot storage facility in Salt Lake City will give the agency untold additional capacity to store the massive amounts of data it collects, as well as adding to its analytical capability. "NSA is the elephant of the U.S. intelligence community, the biggest organization by far with the most capability and (literally) the most memory," said former senior CIA official Bruce Riedel, who now runs the Brookings Intelligence Project.
More NSA: The finder and keeper of countless US secrets
We know that the IRS targeted people, at the request of those higher up, and the ones they picked on were considered enemies. The ability to spy on anyone, and potentially use it against them, is another power that has been abused and will continue to be until laws are changed.
I'm tired of hearing that it's the Republicans fault for supporting the Patriot Act and I am sure many Dems were for it, as well. Just because a power exists doesn't mean it has to be used. Surely there were specific guidelines as to when it was appropriate to use technology to spy on people. It is warranted in certain cases, but to demand access to all Verizon users is simply an abuse. And how many agents will target people they personally dislike? Seems like peoples' privacy is being trampled by government employees with no oversight. We can only imagine the damage done to individuals by government employees who dislike them.
Instead of blaming others, everyone in Washington needs to ensure that such powers are not abused. It will take both sides working together.
People need to be fired and face charges if they took it upon themselves to spy without cause. Funny how those with the power to do this forget just how precious our rights are.
Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was the only senator who voted against the Patriot Act in 2001. He took a stand against the legislation because it increased the federal government’s authority exponentially and didn’t require enough judicial oversight.
Now here we are more than a decade later and it has been revealed that the U.S. government has been collecting massive amounts of data on millions of Americans every single day, using provisions found in the Patriot Act as justification.
