Friday, May 31, 2013

What You Aren't Being Told About Government Snooping Into Reporters' Communications


James Corbett's "The Eye Opener" points out something about government spying that the American people are clueless about. In a discussion of the recent controversy over the Obama administration's efforts to search e-mail and phone records of members of the media in an effort to learn the source of government leaks, a former government official makes an admission that should have every American alarmed. Former FBI counter terrorism chief Tim Clemente acknowledges that the Justice Department really didn't need to obtain a search warrant to go snooping into the e-mails and phone records of reporters. Under a little-noticed law passed in 1994, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), the National Security Agency began capturing and storing all digitized communications, including all e-mail and telephone communications of every single American. These records are meticulously stored in a massive archived database in Utah where authorized federal law enforcement officials can snoop through any phone calls and e-mails you've made in the past. Now this information would not be admissible in a court of law to prove your guilt of committing a crime, but it allows Big Brother government to view the most intimate details of your life. Fishing expeditions can lead to targeting of Americans for further criminal investigation. Corbett's take on the surveillance of  AP reporters and Fox News' James Rosen is that the mainstream media outrage is contrived and is designed to hard wire the wholesale surveillance of the public into law.

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