Unfortunately, the excuse that "at least Obama isn't Bush!" wears thinner and thinner with each passing week. As deputy legal director of the ACLU Jameel Jaffer says, "It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies."
NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily (the Guardian)
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
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The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
The idea of secret court orders is antithetical to democracy and a egregious violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech.