Legal Commentary

NSA Snooped on All of US -- Especially Journalists

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

It’s important to get to the bottom of this one.

Threat Level from Wired.com, Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications,

Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, spoke on Wednesday to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Tice has acknowledged in the past being one of the anonymous sources that spoke with The New York Times for its 2005 story on the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

After that story was published, President Bush said in a statement that only people in the United States who were talking with terrorists overseas would have been targeted for surveillance.

But Tice says, in truth, the spying involved a dragnet of all communications, confirming what critics have long assumed.

“The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications,” he said. “Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. … They monitored all communications.”

For those who came in late, the Wikipedia article on Russel Tice makes interesting reading.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).