Spying on Americans: NSA Asked Verizon for All Call Data

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Some have scoffed at the reality that in the United States personal privacy is a thing of the past.  While we face ridiculous lengths to access financial and healthcare records, the government is spying on our every move.  The map above is from a January, 2008 post shows that spying on citizens in America ranks up there with levels in China and Russia - that's right, this is from BEFORE Barack Obama was elected for those in the GOP base - and things have not improved over the intervening years as evidenced by a new story in the Washington Post about the NSA - National Security Administration - accessing all of Verizon's call records.  That's right, all of them, not just those of suspected would be terrorists.  Think you are having a private phone conversation?  Think again.   Here are highlights from the Post story (NOTE: it was a British paper that first broke the story):

The National Security Agency appears to be collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order issued in April.

The order appears to require a Verizon subsidiary to provide the NSA with daily information on all telephone calls by its customers within the United States and from foreign locations into the United States.

The order, which was signed by a judge from the secret court that oversees domestic surveillance, was first reported on the Web site of the Guardian newspaper. The Web site reproduced a copy of the order, which two former U.S. officials told The Washington Post appears to be authentic.

If the document is genuine, it could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued. It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carriers under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

An expert in this aspect of the law said Wednesday night that the order appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006. The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.

The order falls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the government to make broad demands on telephone carriers for information about calls. In this case, the order requires Verizon to provide “ongoing, daily” information about “all call detail records . . . created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad; or wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

The White House, the Justice Department and the FBI, which apparently sought the order, declined to comment. Spokesmen for Verizon and the court also declined to comment.

But civil liberties groups were quick to criticize the sweeping nature of the order.  “This is a truly stunning revelation,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “This suggests that the government has been compiling a comprehensive record of Americans’ associations and possibly even their whereabouts.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has sued the government over its surveillance prac­tices, said in a statement Wednesday night that the order “requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S. It also contains a gag order prohibiting Verizon from disclosing information about the order to anyone other than their counsel.”

The order also seems to confirm fears expressed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.). In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last year, they said, “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of . . . these secret court opinions. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.”

Government officials have defended the broad surveillance powers, saying that the information has been vital in uncovering and disrupting terrorist plots. They also say that the surveillance has operated under the provisions of the Patriot Act and other laws.

There's more, but the bottom line is that America is increasingly a police state and the trend began under Bush/Cheney and the then GOP controlled Congress.  This may shock the conspiracy crowd in the GOP, but it was their guys who put this system into motion.  I find it frightening.