Domestic spying has increased dramatically under Barack Obama

  When running for president in 2008 Barack Obama promised to end the Bush policy of warrantless wiretaps, but as president not only has Barack Obama not ended this Bush era policy, he has expanded it. And he has expanded the policy beyond simple wiretaps:

A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union shows a dramatic increase in the U.S. Department of Justice’s electronic surveillance of Americans under the Obama administration.

Documents obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that under President Obama between 2009 and 2011, warrantless electronic surveillance requests by the Justice Department to spy on phone communications increased 60 percent from 23,535 to 37,616.

The number of people whose phone calls were subject to such surveillance during that same time period tripled.

Phone numbers called and received, emails sent and received, and other Internet communications were all monitored by the federal government via “pen register” and “trap and trace devices” — systems that measure the data, not the content, about the communication.

Such techniques are different from wiretaps, which monitor the content of communications.

More people were subjected to federal government pen register and trap and trace surveillance of their phones in the past two years than in the previous decade.

DOJ surveillance of Internet communications, while rarer, increased 361 percent between 2009 and 2011.

  On top of this news comes the revelation that the federal government is also pressuring sites like Twitter and Facebook to create a “backdoor” which would allow the government access to people’s accounts on those sites without their knowledge as well:

The FBI also recently renewed its push for social networking sites to build in “back doors” for federal law enforcement’s use. The agency is becoming increasingly concerned that new online communications technologies will make it more difficult to intercept communications from targets of interest

  But just who are these “targets of interest?” Could they be, I don’t know, American film makers who can then be scapegoated for the regime’s national security failures?

  Nakoula Basseley Nakoula remains locked away in prison for some alleged parole violation without charge and without bail in what appears to be the first   instance of the NDAA being used to detain an American citizen indefinitely now that the United States homeland has been designated as a battlefield. (And yes, Republicans deserve blame for this as well) I don’t expect Nakoula to be the last.

  If all of this seems scary to you it should, and please don’t forget that this doesn’t even include the 20,000 drones which have been authorized under the FAA  Reauthorization Act to begin spying on American citizens by the year 2020.

  Big Brother is watching…..