Courtesy of Pam Martens.
ACLU Posts This Graphic On Its Web Site, Showing the Broad Reach of the NSA Under the Obama Administration
By Pam Martens: June 12, 2013
The American Civil Liberties Union has acted swiftly against the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act to allow it to collect metadata on every phone call made and received in the United States. Calling it akin to “snatching every American’s address book,” the ACLU together with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) filed a federal lawsuit yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, challenging the lawfulness of the program and asking for the phone records to be purged from the government’s databases.
The lawsuit was fueled by Edward Snowden, a 29-year old former contractor for the NSA, who turned over Top Secret documents showing the Obama administration is using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to broadly spy on Americans, rather than abiding by the limited scope the law allows. The details were first disclosed by Glenn Greenwald, writing in the Guardian newspaper on June 5. Snowden revealed himself as the source of the leaks four days later.
Members of the congressional intelligence committees have subsequently confirmed to the public that the program has been ongoing for seven years and has collected phone records of all Americans. The ACLU told the court that by detailing whom we speak to, when we talk, for how long and from where, the government has a “wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations.”
The government was able to obtain the phone records data through a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The ACLU provided the court with background on how that process came into being:
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