{"id":14887,"date":"2012-12-14T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T18:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14887"},"modified":"2012-12-14T11:49:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T18:49:33","slug":"usg-does-more-spying-on-citizens-than-in-stasi-east-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14887","title":{"rendered":"USG does more Spying On Citizens than Stasi in East Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History<\/strong>
\n5 December, 2012 – by WashingtonsBlog<\/p>\n

TechDirt notes: In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who\u2019s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the American government has more information on the average American than Stalin had on Russians, Hitler had on German citizens, or any other government has ever had on its people.<\/p>\n

The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.<\/p>\n

Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And \u2013 given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google \u2013 it would be child\u2019s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: \u201cThat\u2019s No Phone. That\u2019s My Tracker\u201c).<\/p>\n

As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.<\/p>\n

He says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

He further explains that he set up the NSA\u2019s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect\u2019s communications could be decrypted. But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen\u2019s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government\u2019s current system is being done for political \u2013 not practical \u2013 purposes.<\/p>\n

He says that if anyone gets on the government\u2019s \u201cenemies list\u201d, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn\u2019t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve previously documented, the spying isn\u2019t being done to keep us safe \u2026 but to crush dissent and to smear people who uncover unflattering this about the government \u2026 and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here).<\/p>\n

And as we point out at every opportunity, this is not some \u201cpost-9\/11 reality\u201d. Spying on Americans \u2013 and most of the other attacks on liberty \u2013 started before 9\/11.<\/p>\n

Senator Frank Church \u2013 who chaired the famous \u201cChurch Committee\u201d into the unlawful FBI Cointel program, and who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee \u2013 said in 1975:<\/p>\n

Th[e National Security Agency’s] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn\u2019t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny \u2026.<\/p>\n

We can debate whether or not dictators are running Washington. But one thing is clear: the capacity is already here. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History 5 December, 2012 – by WashingtonsBlog TechDirt notes: In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who\u2019s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3822],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14887"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14890,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14887\/revisions\/14890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}