WASHINGTON, D.C., August 21, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The U.S. government’s web-based domestic spying program is much more advanced, and has been going on for much longer than previously admitted, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is now believed to have complete access to about 75 percent of U.S. internet traffic, including e-mails, chats, and internet-based phone calls between private citizens.
While previous reports indicated the NSA’s spying efforts were concentrated outside U.S. borders and focused on interactions with non-citizens, the Wall Street Journal has uncovered evidence that the agency is actively monitoring communications between citizens living within the United States, as well.
Government officials told the Journal that with the cooperation of the nation’s leading internet companies, the NSA has installed filtering programs in data centers throughout the country.
The filters look at metadata (the identifying information attached to e-mails and other communications) and search for what the NSA calls “strong selectors”— for example, e-mail addresses and IP addresses linked to organizations it is interested in.
When information is flagged by a filter, it is set aside for NSA review. Once the NSA has the data, agents can look at it in far more detail, including the content and detailed information about the sender or receiver.

In contrast to previous reports that suggested the NSA was focusing its filtering efforts on foreign-U.S. data transfer points, officials told the Journal the filters are actively monitoring traffic at more than a dozen major internet junctions throughout the U.S. – and have been for more than a decade.
 
In one example given by the Journal, the NSA launched a dragnet-style spy program launched by the NSA in advance of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation and NSA arranged with Qwest Communications International Inc. to use intercept equipment for a period of less than six months around the time of the event,” the Journal reports. “It monitored the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City area.”

The NSA has been at the center of a controversy over online privacy since details were first leaked about the agency’s domestic spying programs earlier this summer.
Through foreign media, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in June that the NSA has been collecting the telephone records of hundreds of millions of Americans on an “ongoing, daily basis,” as well as tracking search history, e-mail content, file transfers, and live chats via direct access to Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and other major American internet companies (an initiative the agency refers to as “PRISM”).

The NSA’s charter forbids its spying on U.S. citizens.
In June, pro-life leaders reacted to news of the spy scandal with disgust and apprehension, warning LifeSiteNews.com that the NSA’s monitoring of U.S. citizens’ communications could have a chilling effect on free speech.

Jim Sedlak of American Life League told LifeSiteNews.com that such practices have no place in a free nation.

Sedlak said that because American Life League is on Planned Parenthood’s list of top 15 “anti-choice” organizations, and because President Barack Obama is very closely tied to the abortion giant, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were also targeted by the administration for monitoring. But he said the threat of retribution wouldn’t stop him or his group from speaking up for unborn babies.
He vowed, “We will not be intimidated.”

Source: LifeSite News