2008 Examples of NSA Abuse – Surveillance on Americans

Posted by Tina

The Daily Caller calls our attention to former abuses:

The revelations detailing the extent of the National Security Agency’s espionage capabilities raises the specter that their powers could be misused to target Americans who have nothing to do with terrorism.

In fact, allegations of such misconduct already exist. Here are two examples where anti-terrorism powers granted to law enforcement were allegedly used to target American citizens not engaged in terrorism.
1.) National Security Agency staffers allegedly listened to personal calls of Americans abroad
Two former intercept officers who worked at the NSA facility in Fort Gordon, Georgia told ABC News’s Brian Ross in 2008 that they and their colleagues listened in on phone calls home of hundreds of Americans living and working abroad.

“These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept, and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,” Adrienne Kinne, one of the whistle-blowers and a former Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News.

The second example has to do with new bank regulations in the Patriot Act that requires banks to report unusual financial activity and results in snooping on those engaged in activity unrelated to terrorism.

Character matters, but since religious training is under severe attack and the new generations are making up rules for themselves as they go along…character traits such as loyalty, honesty, trust, and honor become very squishy ideals. As if fighting terrorists, drug lords, criminals and thugs wasn’t difficult enough. Can you imagine how differently it would have been to conduct WWII under these social conditions? No wonder our nation is under stress.

This security matter just adds fuel to an already very dangerous world.