NSA Accused of Extracting Americans' Communication Info from Google, Facebook, Apple and others

My last post, Warrantless FBI Searches of Google User Information in America, ended up being quite the canary in the coal mine regarding the magnitude of warrantless searches and seizure's of Americans' electronic based communications carried out by the Federal Government.

The post chronicled the FBI and other federal agencies use of a secretive and constitutionally questionable orders called "National Security Letter," as a means to force internet giants such as Google, Facebook and yahoo to comply to federal government's demands to give up sensitive user data such as email content, financial transactions, youtube videos viewed and others.  Not more than a week had gone by when a former CIA/NSA computer analyst leaked bombshell classified documents to the media alerting Americans (and the world) that the Federal Government, through the NSA, has a police state apparatus that would make the stasi under Soviet East Germany jealous. To recap, it was revealed that the NSA:

• Has a tool called Boundless Informant, where the NSA tracks billions of gigabytes of web and telephone communication data from Americans than it does Russia and many other countries-- all without a warrant.
• Uses a data mining program called Prism, that seeks to tap directly into servers of google, facebook, microsoft, Skype, email content and others to attain user information, search history and other data that could be used to create a dossier on every American-- all without a warrant. 
• Tracks phone "meta data" communication records of Americans from telecom giants such as Verizon-- all without a warrant.
• Is vital agency for the Administration's creation of targets for offensive cyber warfare attacks. All this while harping on other country's for their cyber warfare attacks against US businesses.

If this does not alarm you, perhaps a refresher of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution is needed. As a reminder, the American Republic was founded on the rule of law, rather than the fiat of a king. Much of this was rooted in the American colonialists experiences of British soldiers- at the direction of the British Parliament and King, routinely invaded their homes without warrants, searched their papers, letters, belongings and books and stopped them on the streets during the 1760s. That period in Colonial America was absolute tyranny and the Founding Fathers knew any new national government would have to be bound by a Supreme Law of the Land on what they could and could not do to its citizens. This became the Constitution.



Some may think that the Constitution is too antiquated to deal with complex issues as "meta data," internet searches and email content. However, a recent Federal Court ruling showed otherwise- the Fourth Amendment still applies. From Wikipedia:

• "On December 14, 2010, in United States v. Warshak, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his emails and that the government violated Warshak's Fourth Amendment rights by compelling his internet service provider to turn over his emails without first obtaining a warrant based upon probable cause.^[87]"

If the Administration seeks to change the natural rights of Americans illuminated in the US Constitution and years of English Common law prior to that, then it should state its case to the American people, and lobby to create a Constitutional Amendment that clarifies the government's ability to monitor every American's electronic communication use. Otherwise, it should abide by the words of a former Senator from Illinois:

Senator Obama in 2007