This researcher specializes in all matters related to the National Security State. In this piece he draws from a wide variety of resources information related to the growth of the full-spectrum surveillance systems and their uses, all of which our hero Edward Snowden recently warned us about.
While the public is rightly angered by the illegal, unconstitutional nature of NSA programs which seize and store data for retrospective harvesting by intelligence and law enforcement officials, including the content of phone calls, emails, geolocational information, bank records, credit card purchases, travel itineraries, even medical records--in secret, and with little in the way of effective oversight--the historical context of how, and why, this vast spying apparatus came to be is often given short shrift.
