NSA Builds the Biggest Spy Center

[Rayaan]

The worry has already begun with what the current administration is doing with it.

It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.

This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinio...l&_r=1&

Obama’s claim this week that the government doesn’t spy on Americans is totally false. Not only is the NSA spying on Americans, but it’s sharing that information with a variety of other agencies … like the IRS and local law enforcement.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/o...e-him.html

The top counter-terrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and Bush – Richard Clarke – says:

The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/t...tream.html