Call this diary a bit of a mea culpa. It turns out, I was wrong. There apparently have been multiple federal employees with both the authority over and access to DOMESTIC communications, which has not only enabled them to intercept and eavesdrop on Americans' communications, but has also allowed them, in fact, to actually do so. Even worse, the practice of granting free, unfettered access to such domestic communications has all been continuing unabated under Obama's watch.
Admittedly, just as Greenwald suggested, these numerous employees have both the ability and the access to freely spy on Americans' communications, word-for-word. Many of these employees, in fact, not only intercepted the communications, they were able to store them and continue to access them at will, or even use the private information contained in the communications for their own benefit.
The amounts are staggering, and the abuses are outrageous. In one case, just one federal employee with access to these communications was able to intercept and store hundreds of thousands of private, domestic communications all by himself. In another case, a single federal employee was able to intercept, collect, and keep more than 43,000 communications in complete form to do with as he pleased -- including the ability to review the communications word-for-word, if he wanted. And again, ALL OF THEM were DOMESTIC communications. In yet another case, a similarly-positioned employee was not only given the access and authority which enabled him to intercept and review, with full access, more than 30,000 domestic communications, but horrifyingly, based on the information he found in those communications, he was able to divert more than $275,000 to his own accounts!
I admit, I wish I had known all this when I wrote my most recent diary suggesting that Greenwald was exaggerating the risks and the abuses of government access to domestic communications. Even it means we must join with generally anti-government forces, we must do whatever we can to shut down this outrageous system which grants these people access to and authority over Americans' domestic communications. Even the Washington Post, which I admit I cited in my last diary to criticize Greenwald, has apparently been all over this story for some time. Look, I can apologize and wish I'd done things differently all I want, but the the upshot, on which I think we can all agree, is that this program must be shut down NOW. My sincere apologies for not researching this further before my last diary. Links and more below the fold.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.inquisitr.com/...
http://www.suntimes.com/...
The Post Office is out of control. I am outraged by all this abuse of Americans' freedoms. Enough of this talk of mere "reforms" or "safeguards" -- this abusive system of gaining access to our private, domestic communications must be SHUT DOWN.