General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why the Snowden Leak Is Such a Big Deal [View all]TxVietVet
(1,905 posts)The US and it's Anglo allies Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand have been doing this type of monitoring for many years.
When 911 happened, the conservanazis under bu$h knew they had a chance to get all the privacy issues out of the way to monitor the US' and the conservanazis political issues. If I remember, there was an incident where an ATT employee blew the whistle about the government had a secret room in San Francisco, CA where they were just dumping all the data to the NSA/government. Later after it all came to light, the government changed some of the laws including the Patriot Act to do this. BUT, the bu$h/cheney regime probably did THOUSANDS of unwarranted wiretaps until they got tired of the complaints of media that they gave up and used warrants (so bu$h/cheney said).
What I amazed by is that most of the people who complain about this must have been asleep during all this going on.
You have to assume that all your Internet activity and any broadcast communications is being monitored. BTW, many years ago, I was in the military branch of the NSA and have a little knowledge of how it's done. I'm no expert, but wake up, they ARE listening and have been for many, many years.
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON