risking his life to tell you about NSA surveillance [ot]

Why has the government kept this unilateral surveillance of USA citizens secret and private?

Except that's how they found Bin Laden

We didn't know until recently that all USA citizens unilaterally have been spied on for several years and the data stored. Why not inform us that the entire USA population is being spied on? Why the secrecy? What does keeping it secret alter?

Because you have misstated it. Americans were not being spied on. The program only served to preserve the records. Nothing else. Nobody looked at anything.

Because you have misstated it. Americans were not being spied on. The program only served to preserve the records. Nothing else. Nobody looked at anything.

To access the data, you had to have a SECOND court order.

If you came up with a possible phone number, you had to have a THIRD court order to find out who the number belonged to.

If you wanted to tap that phone you needed a FOURTH court order.

Govt has to scrape all your phone calls and emails because govt forgot to enforce immigration law on 20 expired visas in 2001.

Haines was 24 years old, she dropped out of a graduate program in physics at John Hopkins University and opened a waterfront bookstore in Baltimore. The store “turned into the regular meeting place of a small group of erotica aficionados,” where Haines held a monthly erotica reading.

Haines would set the mood for the readings. For example, in preparation for one session, “she placed red candles throughout her store,” then “got pulses racing” by reading the following:

“In the topmost bed chamber of the house (the prince) found her. He had stepped over sleeping chambermaids and valets, and, breathing the dust and damp of the place, he finally stood in the door of her sanctuary. And approaching her, he gave a soft gasp as he touched her cheek, and her teeth through her parted lips, and then her tender rounded eyelids.”

Haines has taken part in “virtually every senior-level meeting at the president’s National Security Council over the past two years.”

She has never worked in the intelligence agency in which she will soon hold the No. 2 role

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

What's the 'secret' room that the NSA has built inside various telecom companies? Are calls, emails, et al routed to the NSA's 'secret' operation's room before reaching their intended destination?