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US Started Keeping Secret Records of International Telephone Calls In 1992
schwit1 writes Starting in 1992, the Justice Department amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries. The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA's intelligence arm, was the government's first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans' privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials described the details of the Justice Department operation to USA TODAY. Most did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence program, part of which remains classified. The operation had 'been approved at the highest levels of Federal law enforcement authority,' including then-Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy, Eric Holder.
I'd be willing to wager that intelligence monitoring of international phone calls started right about the time international phone calls were first available.
This article says the first trans-Atlantic calls was in 1927.
This article says government wiretaps started in the 1860s.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
And according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333, that part of it dates back to Reagan.
Really, I don't think you're going to find any president in recent history whose hands are clean on any of this. They're all responsible for adding another layer or two. The only time I can think of anything getting rolled back was the Church Committee and such in response to Watergate, but even that didn't go nearly far enough, I suspect.
These days, the NSA collects your entire online life. You are a fucking idiot if you don't realize this by now.
While we're confessing, how long have they been faking evidence to cover up secret (and likely illegal) surveillance in parallel construction cases?
If the surveillance goes back earlier then the parallel construction does too.
You sir are an idiot if you think the "common people" are concerned over monitoring. They think it's just stuff they post on Facebook for everyone to see anyhow. Get them to understand that the NSA is hoarding pictures of their teenagers junk and you will get the outrage that will actually get something done. No politician cares what a few concerned citizens say; for any real change you need mass viral outrage right before elections.