How Does Our Government Surveil Us? Let's Count the Ways

Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs are tracking people.

One. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more. WIRED just reported NSA is building an immense new data center, which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world. Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it far too often does.

Two. The Federal Bureau of Investigation National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) has more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about US citizens collected from commercial databases, government information and criminal probes which it uses in its investigations.

Three. The American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times recently reported that cellphones of private individuals in the US are being tracked without warrants by state and local law enforcement all across the country. With more than 300 million cellphones in the US connected to more than 200,000 cell phone towers, cellphone tracking software can pinpoint the location of a phone and document the places the cellphone goes over the course of a day, week, month or longer. See in Re US for Historical Cell Site Data 747F Supp 2d 827 9SD Texas 2010) October 29, 2010.

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