This week marks the 10th anniversary of the first story featuring National Security Agency (NSA) contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s initial revelation: the role of Verizon in aiding NSA’s telephone metadata mass surveillance program.
NSA’s ostensible overseers – the House and Senate Intelligence Committees – had been witting of the mass surveillance and instead of stopping it had gone along with it.
Worse, through the annual appropriations process, Congress had given NSA (and the FBI) the money to continue that mass surveillance. American taxpayers were paying for the “privilege” of being spied on at scale by their own government.
Frank Church is likely spinning in his grave.