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Somewhere between Sept. 11th and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large

Post-9/11, NSA 'enemies' include us
By: James Bamford
September 8, 2011

Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide.

Within weeks of the attacks, the giant ears of the National Security Agency, always pointed outward toward potential enemies, turned inward on the American public itself. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established 23 years before to ensure that only suspected foreign agents and terrorists were targeted by the NSA, would be bypassed. Telecom companies, required by law to keep the computerized phone records of their customers confidential unless presented with a warrant, would secretly turn them over in bulk to the NSA without ever asking for a warrant.

Around the country, in tall, windowless telecom company buildings known as switches, NSA technicians quietly began installing beam-splitters to redirect duplicate copies of all phone calls and email messages to secret rooms behind electronic cipher locks.

There, NSA software and hardware designed for “deep packet inspection” filtered through the billions of email messages looking for key names, words, phrases and addresses. The equipment also monitored phone conversations and even what pages people view on the Web — the porn sites they visit, the books they buy on Amazon, the social networks they interact with and the text messages they send and receive.

Two more questions for the MSNBC GOP presidential candidate debate!

I need your votes! The debate is tonight 8:00 p.m. EDT, May 3, 2007 on MSNBC!

Here is my previous question:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/8279

And here's Freethinking Citizen's:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/8261

Here is my new question for Rudy Giuliani:

by Mekt_Ranzz on 05.03.2007 at 09:59 AM
Question is for: Rudolph Giuliani

Why did you ask to have your records as Mayor of New York City sealed for 25 years?

So far it can be found here:

http://dyn.politico.com/debate/showquestions.cfm?page=1&sb=rc&cd=13&tp=0&submit=Search

and another general question for all candidates:

by Mekt_Ranzz on 05.03.2007 at 09:57 AM
Topic Is: Energy

Do you believe the threat of Peak Oil is real? Why or why not?

It so far can be found here:

http://dyn.politico.com/debate/showquestions.cfm?page=1&sb=rc&cd=0&tp=5&submit=Search

Thanks!

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