American_Jihad
Flaming Libs/Koranimals
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5 Things To Know About The NSA's Surveillance Activities
by Krishnadev Calamur
October 23, 2013
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What does the NSA monitor?
Metadata, which includes the records of several billion telephone calls made in the U.S. each day. The NSA does listen to the content of some of those phone calls. It also monitors the online and phone calls of foreign citizens.
Emails, instant messages and Facebook posts, as well as contact lists and raw Internet traffic. Tech companies have denied giving the agency direct access to their servers, but the NSA paid them millions of dollars to cover the cost of complying with its requests.
Is the activity legal?
Yes at least the phone spying is, according to a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
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How are the operations justified?
National security. As NPR's Eyder Peralta noted last week, the NSA and the CIA collaborate on drone attacks against suspected terrorists.
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Can you protect your data?
Short answer: It's unlikely.
As Eyder reported over at the Two-Way blog last month, documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has the keys to crack most Internet encryption methods.
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Why are people overseas angry?
There's no court that oversees the NSA's activities on foreign communications. The leaks have indicated that the agency not only spied on countries such as Iran, but also allies like France, Brazil, Mexico and even U.N. diplomats.
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5 Things To Know About The NSA's Surveillance Activities : Parallels : NPR