One Nation, Under Surveillance

A CNN headline in late November 2015 announced that the National Security Agency, or NSA, would cease collecting telephone data and storing that information for the foreseeable future. While some may hail this as proof that it’s the citizens of the United States who have the power - not government agencies - I would caution everyone not to jump to the conclusion that the program has been terminated. What it really means is that the NSA will stopped TELLING us that it is collecting the data. If you are naïve enough to believe that they will willingly discontinue something they have been doing illegally for years (and getting away with it), then you don’t know how our secret agencies work.

In June, President Obama signed a reform measure that took away the NSA's authority to collect phone record bulk data of Americans. So in June the measure was signed, and now at the end of November, the NSA claims they are finally going to comply, although they requested continued limited access to the data until February 29, 2016. But that’s just a formality meant to assure us they would obey…grudgingly. Since when has the presidency been any threat to our intelligence agencies, especially after JFK was murdered? The report went on to state that “the government will move to a more "focused and targeted" approach in gathering intelligence”, which is how the Office of the Director of National Intelligence white-washed it. The change in intelligence gathering comes after over two years of agency lying, misrepresenting, stone-walling, and making threats after details about the program were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA knows no one will actually challenge them on it. Americans are good at making a lot of noise but not stopping illegal activity within our own borders.

Former CIA director Richard Helms     Former CIA Counterintelligence Chief Angleton

Domestic spying should come as no surprise to anyone; it is nothing new in our country. A program called Operation CHAOS was set up by CIA director Richard Helms and run by James Angleton of the CIA’s counterintelligence staff starting in the mid 1960s to keep tabs on Americans, not our enemies or hostile foreign governments, but U.S. citizens. These were people that Helms and Angleton deemed a great danger. Nothing has changed. It’s only gotten bigger, sneakier, more compartmentalized, and more adept at spying on us. No one sums it better than Richard Helms who wrote this in his memoir, “In the secret operations canon, it is axiomatic that the probability of leaks escalates exponentially each time a classified document is exposed to another person – be it an agency employee, a member of Congress, a senior official, a typist, or a file clerk. Effective compartmentalization is fundamental to all secret activity. The potential for leaks, deliberate or accidental, is vast.” Or to put it more simply, we can keep it under wraps if fewer people are privy to the program. They’ll still do it but the data collecting will henceforth just be “unreported.” What we don’t know won’t hurt us…is how the NSA sees it. Don’t expect to ever enjoy the freedoms of the Fourth Amendment again. 

The NSA considers itself and what it does as above the law…any law. Self-preservation of the agency and the operation it is involved with, is its only prime directive. Adherence to the Constitution and obedience to the American people through its elected officials is a gnat flying around the NSA’s head. They pay just enough attention to shoo it away now and then. This ending of the bulk data collection is the most recent “shoo”. March all you want, protest all you want, demand accountability all you want. The NSA only hears when and what it wants to hear.

We know what's going on; we just can't seemingly stop it.

Some within the government have tried to maintain NSA stood for No Such Agency and that if, even if it existed, it was no threat to U.S. citizens, while the rest of us understand it means Now Spying on Americans.

Something the NSA routinely scoffs at is that the purpose of the United States Constitution is to limit the power of the federal government and its agencies, not the American people. Rest in peace Fourth Amendment.