Massive FBI domestic spying revealed
Documents prove FBI has national eavesdropping program that tracks IMs, emails and cell phones
FBI also spies on home soil for military, documents show; Much information acquired without court order
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been routinely monitoring the e-mails, instant messages and cell phone calls of suspects across the United States – and has done so, in many cases, without the approval of a court.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and given to the Washington Post – which stuck the story on page three – show that the FBI’s massive dragnet, connected to the backends of telecommunications carriers, “allows authorized FBI agents and analysts, with point-and-click ease, to receive e-mails, instant messages, cellphone calls and other communications that tell them not only what a suspect is saying, but where he is and where he has been, depending on the wording of a court order or a government directive,” the Post says.</em>
Looks like we’ve reached the point that Justice Brandeis warned us of in 1928, when this entire mess got started:
“Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.”
