NSA Activities

The revelations by Edward Snowden regarding the unconstitutional activities of the NSA only served to verify what US citizens have suspected all along.  However, NPR this morning is carrying story after story trying to convince us that most US citizens don't mind having their phone records stored in a database, and that having the government record all of our phone, email, and online activity is no big deal.

I am going to tell you why government storage of data and metadata is dangerous.  First, it doesn't matter if the government is only saving metadata or saving emails and conversations with certain words.  Whose decides what words get put on an enemy list? In just the last months we have seen government agencies (IRS, USDA, EPA) target conservative, tea party, religious and constitutional  groups.  Whose to say the NSA wouldn't and isn't already doing the same?  

Second, you say that that if the government were to put together an enemies list and target a religion or conservative group that US military  would never follow orders to target  US citizens.  However, this forgets that the military with all its drones and satellites is nearly automated.  Whose to say one day the government could just launch thousands of drones domestically and upload a target list and remotely and automatically hunt down and target  US citizens arbitrarily labeled enemies of the state.

Third, with all the backdoors written into the many programs we use on our computers and now with the storage of information in the "cloud", whose to say the government couldn't plant false information and files on our computer or in our email or cloud storage and label that person a domestic terrorist or pediphile?

NSA Data Centers:

Fort Meade (Baltimore), Maryland
Friendship Annex (Baltimore), Maryland
Bluffdale (Salt Lake City), Utah
Fort Gordon (Augusta), Georgia
San Antonio, Texas (Texas Cryptology Center)
Oahu, Hawaii (KRSOC, Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center)

Geneva, Switzerland (NSA spy on US citizens by foreign intelligence or private contracting firms from foreign country)
RAF Menwith Hill (Harrogate), England Eschelon
Japan???

According to the Washington Post, "[e]very day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases." [Wiki]

Missions:

Shamrock- monitired all overseas telegrams.
Echelon- monitors all phone and fax communications
Thinthread- monitors all cellphone and email
Trailblazer- storing all cellphone and email
Turbulance- placing monitoring malware and backdoors in all electronic devices
Prism- monitoring and storing all online communications (skype, google, AOL, MSN, VOIP, P2P, ect

Narus STA 6400 Device (Room 641A ): 20 or more internet fiberoptic mass hi-speed monitoring stations.
NarusInsight (OC-192) capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second.

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2006/04/08/200431/-All-About-NSA-s-and-AT-T-s-Big-Brother-Machine-the-Narus-6400

[Conjecture]
The problem with recording metadata:
1. Unconstitutional
2 Compilation of lists
3. Individuals targeted by drone strikes
4. False information planted on e-devices