Yesterday, in the still pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal, Siobhan Gorman brings us the deeply disturbing but unsurprising news:
As Agency Sweeps Up Data
Terror Fight Blurs
Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email
The lede:
Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.
Really what can you say? I don’t know if I have outrage fatigue or what, but I cannot even come up with any commentary. Over at TPM Muckraker, Paul Kiel, who put me on to the story, had this to add, and promises more soon.
