The U.S. National Security Agency has been collecting millions of customer records from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, as part of a effort ostensibly for protection from terrorists.
But civil libertarians might now see a dramatic danger that collateral information also is being collected, and could be used in other ways by a growing “administrative state” than now has become a “spying state.”
Federal agencies also have been collecting emails and Web search data from nine Internet app providers as well.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community has add access to the servers of nine Internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
Data about credit-card transactions also has been collected, and the current extent of continuing operations is unknown, the Wall Street Journal now reports.
Officials claim the program is “targeted” at terrorism suspects.
But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that data on all sorts of U.S. citizens and residents also is collected, and apparently is retained.
That means we have to “trust” agencies not to misuse that information.
"Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new,'' said Senate Majority Leader (D., Nev.)
Maybe it isn't citizens who should "calm down."
No comments:
Post a Comment