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The surveillance state is even bigger, and scarier, than we thought

And,
as a result, it’s time that we broke up the failed national security
experiment known as the Department of Homeland Security. Returning to
dozens of independent agencies will return internal checks-and-balances
to within the Executive branch, and actually make us both safer and less
likely to be the victims of government snooping overreach.

Last Wednesday, the 
Guardian‘s
Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency is secretly
collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon users. The agency
received authorization to track phone “metadata” over a 3 month period
from a special court order issued in April.

We now also know that what the 
Guardian uncovered
is just the tip of the iceberg of an ongoing phone and internet records
collection program that likely includes almost all major U.S.
telecommunications companies.

President
Obama – who promised the “most transparent administration ever” – now
finds himself and his DHS at the center of yet another civil liberties
controversy. That controversy has deepened in the wake of two reports
published last night in both the Washington Post and the Guardian that
outlined a different NSA snooping program – a data mining initiative
code-named “PRISM.”

PRISM
– which was created in 2007 during the Bush Administration – is almost
certainly the most far-reaching surveillance program ever created. By
reaching into the servers of 9 different major U.S. internet companies –
including Facebook, Google and Apple – the NSA has access to millions
of users’ personal data, including emails, chats and videos.