PANOPTICON mass surveillance in the united states
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In response to the committee's findings, the United States Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which led to the establishment of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was authorized to issue surveillance warrants.
Several decades later in 2013, the presiding judge of the FISA Court, Reggie Walton, told The Washington Post that the court only has a limited ability to supervise the government's surveillance, and is therefore "forced" to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided by federal agents.
On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's "Meet the Press" without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything — telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
== ECHELON ==
In 1988 an article titled "Somebody's listening" by Duncan Campbell in the New Statesman described the signals-intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON". The program was engaged by English-speaking World War II Allied countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (collectively known as AUSCANNZUKUS). It was created by the five countries to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and of its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.
By the 1990s the ECHELON system could intercept satellite transmissions, public switched telephone network (PSTN) communications (including most Internet traffic), and transmissions carried by microwave. The New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager provided a detailed description of ECHELON in his 1996 book Secret Power. While some member governments denied the existence of ECHELON, a report by a committee of the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the program's use and warned Europeans about its reach and effects. The European Parliament stated in its report that the term "ECHELON" occurred in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicated it was a signals-intelligence collection system capable of interception and content-inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data-traffic globally.
James Bamford further described the capabilities of ECHELON in Body of Secrets (2002) about the National Security Agency. Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement have, over the years, caused considerable public concern.
== Global surveillance disclosures (1970–2013) ==
== Escalation following September 11, 2001 attacks ==
We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act and to find them before they strike.
In the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, bulk domestic spying in the United States increased dramatically. The desire to prevent future attacks of this scale led to the passage of the Patriot Act. Later acts include the Protect America Act (which removes the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign targets) and the FISA Amendments Act (which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements).
Follow-on legislation have amended and reauthorized the post-9/11 surveillance authorities. The USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 limited certain bulk collection authorized under the USA PATRIOT Act. Subsequent legislation reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows for warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States and will sunset in April 2026 if not reauthorized by Congress.
In 2002, "Total Information Awareness" was established by the U.S. government in order to "revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists".