How the Government Tracks You: NSA Surveillance

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The U.S. Government has turned the Internet into something it was never intended to be: a system for spying on us in our most private moments.

Narrated by Evangeline Lilly

Brought to you by Fight for the Future and Demand Progress.

Produced by Mata Wata -- http://matawata.com
Executive Producer: Evangeline Lilly -- http://evangeline-lilly.net

The government is monitoring private phone calls

your children and my children's private phone calls
and tracking who their associates are.

This June we learned that out private lives are no longer private.

The US government is secretly tracking the emails

purchases, text messages, location
and phone calls of people all over the world.

Ed Rooney, Ed? This is George Peterson...

With code names like PRISM and XKEYSCORE,

this network of monitoring programs

is just one part of largest surveillance system in history.

This open-ended surveillance system is illegal and operates in total secrecy.

Under the system, the government
can know where you've been,

where you are, and where you're going.

The program was only exposed when former
NSA contractor Edward Snowden

leaked documents detailing the extensive data collection.

I've got information man, new shit is come to light.

The president, the NSA and their lawyers
have tried to deflect the public outrage

by distorting the facts and misleading the public about the process.

US courts have never allowed the government
to run a spying program of this scale.

So how did this happen?

Well, lets take a step back, for a minute.

America's founders hated oppressive British
surveillance and unreasonable search and seizure.

the issue here is independence.

Understanding that privacy was necessary to almost
every basic right in our constitution,

they established the fourth amendment.

The fourth amendment exist to prevent the government from tracking or searching your personal information,

unless they have good reason to believe a crime is happening.

It's all there black and white, clear as crystal.

Using the NSA the US government is violating
the highest law of the country, the Constitution.

Government surveillance has gone on for decades,
but things got a lot worse in 2001,

when the US congress passed the Patriot Act,

giving secret FISA courts more authority to
grant surveillance requests on a large scale.

Instead of getting a warrant for an
individual person suspected of crime

the governement could now search a large list of persons.

Even those under the no suspicion of criminal activity.

FISA courts aren't required to disclose
what court orders are being approved

and supporting evidence isn't needed.

Of the 1,789 request for authorization,
one was withdrawn by the government.

All the other ones were granted

It's a rubber stamp.

All of this is protected by secrecy,
with no system for checks and balances.

If the NSA is collecting information on you
based on what you read, or the websites you go to

you'll likely never know or get to
stop it no matter who you are.

Programs like PRISM,
completely ignore the purpose of warrants

while claiming to work within the law.

The US government has turned the internet
we love into something it was never intended to be...

...a tool for surveilling everyone.

This is the most essential problem.

Through these secret courts
and secret interpretations of the laws,

US government agents can illegally track
internet users based on things like keywords,

Analysts who use a system for a web portal
at Fort Mead,

key in selectors or search terms that are
designed to produce at least 51% confidence

in a targets foreign-ness.

Data has been collected for years
on the most popular websites,

gmail, facebook, yahoo, and many more.

There's 1000s of words that government tracks.

Words like "marijuana"

Almost any email you send

might get your account monitored.

This kind of tracking can make you
second guess what you say.

That's why mass spying is unconstitutional.

Abuses are inevitable and data leaks are already happening.

Spying on our internet usage gives the
government power over our lives.

What happens to free speech,
free association, or a free press,

when everyone is under constant surveillance,
even in our most private moments.

Experts on surveillance, privacy
and intelligence agree on one thing.

The NSA, Presidents Bush and Obama
and their secret courts are

interpreting multiple laws in a way that
most Americans would find shocking.

This is allowing the kind of surveillance and collection

that the Constitution was not meant to allow.

These programs break the law.

They violate the fourth amendment and they strip us of our privacy.

The US Constitution was written to prevent
government surveillance programs like PRISM.

It's up to us to demand
that these ideals be upheld.

Help us stop the NSA, restore the Constitution
and keep the world free.