Bad news for pandaphiles: The National Zoo’s “PandaCam” will go dark during a government shutdown.
However, the federal government’s power to keep an eye on the American people will continue to grow — it’s an “essential service,” apparently.
Sunday brought yet another revelation from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Since 2010, the New York Times reports, the NSA has been exploiting its vast databases to create “sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.”
On Friday, the Hill published a document from the NSA inspector general providing details on several occasions in which analysts spied on current or former paramours.
The NSA’s informal nickname for this is “LOVEINT.” In one case, for example, “on the subject’s first day of access to the SIGINT system, he queried six email addresses belonging to a former girlfriend, a U.S. person.” He got a demotion and two months’ reduced pay.
In 2008, a former Navy intercept operator stationed at a NSA facility described how his colleagues used to pass around highlights of soldiers’ phone calls home from Iraq
Full article by Gene Healy @ Reason http://reason.com/archives/2013/10/01/the-nsa-is-still-spying-on-you
