Maggie's Farm

Back in 1999, it was revealed that intel microprocessors each have a unique identification number, which can presumably be readily accessed by "those in the know". We now know that 50 major US companies which provide the software. hardware, internet services, phone services, etc have opened up all the computers, phones, tablets, data, files etc of their customers to be easily taken by spies. All our medical records are now required to be computerized, and readily available for spy download. Each computer and its contents, now correlated with all phone calls, location of the caller at the time of the call, all emails. all medical records, all credit card, check and other purchases - all without a reasonable cause warrant. Why would anyone who can find an alternative company buy anything from a US company? And there will be alternative companies. There will be foreign operating systems, software, microprocessors and services sponsored and quickly developed to replace our US companies. Our government doesn't care that its demands will destroy US companies, jobs, and trust in the US. No one can't now trust what our companies say, because they are required to comply, and required to lie. Even if the government claims to stop collecting everything on everyone, who would believe them?

This massive snooping and data collection did not prevent the Boston bombings, even though the Russians warned us twice. The data collection must be for a different purpose than stopping terrorists. But the IRS and EPA can find "Tea Party" and other political enemies to harass.

As despicable as Glen Greenwald has been, he is right this time. (even a broken clock is right twice a day)

Agent Cooper, how can you say the secret star-chamber FISA court is a "rubber-stamp. It was just pure chance that they didn't deny any of the 1,856 spying applications during calendar year 2012. Why, its just as if you were flipping a coin and it just happened to come up "heads" 1856 times in a row - pure chance, happens all the time somewhere in the universe.

Also, because its officially the "FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Court", they couldn't possibly authorize any data collection on American citizens without a showing of specific cause against the citizen. Surely the secret FISA court, that won't even publish any non-confidential parts of its opinions (such as legal reasoning) can be trusted to follow the Constitution!!!

Very few people actually know what the british "Star Chamber" court was for, and why our founders intended the Constitution to prevent it happening here. But it looks like it is a model for the government leviathan.