MEDIA ROOTS – US Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden have asked the National Security Agency to reveal an estimate of how many Americans the agency has spied on through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  In 2008, FISA was expanded to allow the wiretapping of phone and e-mail communications without a warrant, and there is virtually no oversight of its wiretapping operations.  The NSA’s ironic response to the Senators’ request: revealing that information would be a “violation of privacy.”

I interview Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government program about FISA privacy concerns and EPIC’s Freedom of Information Act request, revealing the Department of Homeland Security’s official list of absurdly innocuous words they search for when they spy on social media networks.

Abby Martin

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Ginger McCall, director for EPIC’s Open Government Program on NSA hypocrisy.

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US NEWS – Wyden, who has earned a reputation as an aggressive advocate for privacy, is pushing NSA as the Senate debates the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a bill that allows the government to wiretap individuals outside of the U.S. and any communication they might have, even if they engage with American citizens.

But NSA says it cannot reveal how many Americans might be affected because the effort would be too great an undertaking.

“Obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of [the] office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,” the inspector general of the intelligence community told Wyden in a Monday letter.

The NSA inspector general also concluded that revealing even an estimate of the number of Americans under surveillance would “violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”

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Photo by flickr user ListentotheMountains