U.S. Government Spying Over The Centuries

ForeignPolicy

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Wednesday October 15, 2014 · 12:33 PM PDT

2014/10/15 · 12:33

I know a something about the works of Andrew Bacevich and Stephen Kinzer and hold them in highest regard. Andrew Bacevich is author and professor at Boston University. Stephen Kinzer is author of "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and their Secret World War". Evan Thomas is author and professor of Journalism at Princeton University. They discusses American intelligence gathering and international surveillance policies over the last half century through the current NSA crisis. Boston Globe national security reporter Bryan Bender moderates.

Apparently more data has been collected on each and every American than the people of East Germany, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia. Included in the great U.S. government data banks are information on most Americans' phone calls, purchases, emails, text messages, Internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records. See Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History

"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technology capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air ... Now that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know at the same time that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people. And no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor anything, telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide...I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return." ~ Senator Frank Church on Meet the Press, 8/17/1975

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