Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, September 12, 2013

NSA Surveillance Documents Released By Officials Show Misuse Of Domestic Spying Program

SAN FRANCISCO — Federal officials on Tuesday released previously classified documents showing misuse of a domestic spying program in 2009.

The Obama administration has been facing mounting pressure to reveal more details about the government's domestic surveillance program since a former intelligence contractor released documents showing massive National Security Agency trawling of domestic data.

The information included domestic telephone numbers, calling patterns and the agency's collection of Americans' Internet user names, IP addresses and other metadata swept up in surveillance of foreign terror suspects.

The documents released Tuesday relate to a time in 2009 when U.S. spies went too far in collecting domestic phone data and then mislead a secret spy court about their activities.

The documents came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A federal judge in 2011 said in a declassified order that he was troubled by at least three incidents over three years where government officials admitted to mistaken collection of domestic data.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: PAUL ELIAS

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