The Wost Kept Secret

The fact that the NSA has been collecting telecommunications data from law abiding American citizens has to be the worst kept secret of the last 10-15 years. Wireless wire taps of foreign communications was a point of contention with the Patriot Act and FISA. The only revelations by Snowden is the President and Congress have signed off on the NSA violating the 4th Amendment; under the Patriot Act FISA only allows for the collection of foreign communications without warrants, not these types of Domestic fishing expeditions added by Obama *. The NSA  can no more hide behind national security, then the President can hide behind Executive Privilege to shied their illegal acts.

But that hasn't stopped the likes of the "Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for deceiving the public about the extent of the NSA's data gathering. Both Sides Can Agree Americas Top Spy Lied About Data Mining It all goes back to an exchange at a Senate hearing back on March 12 when Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, asked Clapper (the man charged with overseeing America's entire national security apparatus) straight up, under oath, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper said, "No sir … not wittingly." In politics this is called giving "an answer that was the "least untruthful", but to those that don't live in the Toon Town, that is Washington, it is a bald face lie.

 Finally, I fail to see how finally getting verification that the US Government is illegally collecting data on American citizens is treasonous as it has caused Americans or our agents to be captured or killed; that is short of a Presidential drone strike on Snowden in the near future.

*In a radio interview Obama Administration’s NSA Assurances ‘a Bunch of Bunk’ ,  Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the Patriot Act on the House floor in 2001 said "that the administration and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court have gone far beyond what the PATRIOT Act intended. Specifically, he said that Section 215 of the act “was originally drafted to prevent data mining” on the scale that’s occurred."