What many of us were well aware would happen when Congress blatantly passed an illegal and unconstitutional piece of FISA ‘legislation’ last year — after being bought off by the Telecoms — that virtually removed all oversight from the FISA law and granted retroactive immunity to those telecoms who were paid millions of taxpayers dollars to spy illegally on U. S. citizens, as demanded by then-President Bush has come to fruition: the National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly abused their ‘authority’ and illegally spied on U.S. citizens and possibly at least one Congress person.
According to Eric Lichtblau and James Risen from The New York Times, the NSA intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in ‘recent months’ on a broader scale than the legal limits established by Congress last year, engaging in ‘overcollection’ of domestic communications of Americans. The problems with the NSA’s surveillance operation have allegedly been ‘fixed.’
Questions are still unanswered and Intelligence officials say they’re examining the scope of the NSA’s surveillance practices. The Senate is allegedly probing the wiretapping violations as well. The extent of the surveillance techniques by the NSA isn’t clear.
New details have also emerged about the earlier Bush authorized domestic-surveillance activities, including the NSA’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress without court approval. Members of the Congressional intelligence committees have been notified in the past weeks that the NSA had encountered operational and legal problems in complying with the new wiretapping law that was passed by Congress last summer.