NSA Whistleblowers Reveal Extent of Eavesdropping

ma11achy was one of several readers to write about claims made by two former military intercept operators who worked for the NSA that "Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home." Ars Technica has a brief report as well, and reader net_shaman adds a link to Glenn Greenwald's opinion piece on the eavesdropping at Salon.

Comments

Makes sense to me

[dave562]

Lets see here... The United States government has sent thousands of troops to occupy and loot a foreign land. There weren't enough troops sent there in the first place to get the job done safely. As a result, many of the troops have faced extended Stop Loss orders that have kept them in the armed services for a year or more after they should have been done with their commitment. Meanwhile at home, the economy is falling apart and those soldiers are going to be coming home into harsh economic conditions where they will have a difficult time finding a job, paying their rent, car bills, child support and everything else. The economic hardship will be stacked on top of all of the PTSD cases from seeing their friends killed next to him, having to violate other human being's basic rights and a whole slew of other issues that arise in moral people put in positions where they are ordered to do immoral things.

If any group of individuals is going to get together and give Uncle Sam the middle finger, it is going to be the returning vets. Some of them actually believe that whole "protect and defend" the Constitution oath that they took. Some of them are even smart enough to realize that the country is being run into the ground by traitors intent on destroying the Constitution and completing the sell out of our economy and civil rights to international bankers in order to establish a single world government. Toss in the fact that those people are trained in urban combat and counter-insurgency operations and well... you have the tip of the spear for a full blown civil insurrection.

Given all of that, if you were setting up a surveillance program with the intent of keeping an eye on people with the potential to upset the power that you're so precariously clinging onto, wouldn't you put the troops under surveillance too? If I were PFC Iraqi-Vet just back from the sandbox with a Purple Heart for wounds sustained and a Bronze Star for operating under fire while my squad was absorbing rifle fire with their bodies and getting peppered with shrapnel, the fact that the government was eavesdropping on my phone sex with my girlfriend might be one straw too many on the back of an already staggering camel.

Given the efficiency of the PsyOps folks, the troops probably don't care. Maybe they already know that their conversations are being eavesdropped on. After all, they sold their bodies and souls to Uncle Sam. It all comes with the territory.