It's important to get to the bottom of this one.
Threat Level from Wired.com, Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications,
Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.
Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, spoke on Wednesday to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Tice has acknowledged in the past being one of the anonymous sources that spoke with The New York Times for its 2005 story on the government's warrantless wiretapping program.
After that story was published, President Bush said in a statement that only people in the United States who were talking with terrorists overseas would have been targeted for surveillance.
But Tice says, in truth, the spying involved a dragnet of all communications, confirming what critics have long assumed.
“The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications,” he said. “Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. … They monitored all communications.”
For those who came in late, the Wikipedia article on Russel Tice makes interesting reading.
Especially Journalists?
Until I read accounts about how the NSA also snooped on Democrats (for security reasons, of course) and and had that information unwittingly (sure, sure) fall into the hands of their political masters who (shockingly, right?) put it to partisan use, I seriously doubt we’re at the bottom of this matter.
What has there been to stop a few very well connected people from collecting insider information on the markets?
That would be the first thing I would do if I had access to that data. Assuming one could sort the information properly.
Which, of course, must be possible or collecting it all would have been worthless.