There have never been many checks and balances on the NSA. However, we haven't cared about NSA that much because we believed that the NSA was spying on foreigners and not on Americans. The NSA is not an arm of the FBI or the CIA.

The NSA is an arm of the Pentagon and is a part of the American military establishment.

The Director of the NSA is Lieutenant General Keith Alexander. Here's how the NSA describes his job at the huge secret military intelligence behemoth:

Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, USA, is the Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) and Commander, Joint Functional Component Command - Network Warfare (JFCC-NW), Fort George G. Meade, MD. As the Director of NSA and Chief of CSS, he is responsible for a Department of Defense agency with national foreign intelligence and combat support responsibilities for NSA/CSS's civilian and military personnel stationed worldwide. As Commander, JFCC-NW, he is responsible for planning, executing and managing forces for coordinating DoD computer network defense (CND) as directed by USSTRATCOM. He was born in Syracuse, NY, and entered active duty at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Americans always rightly believed that the purpose of the NSA was to monitor international and military communications.

That has changed dramatically since George Bush has been in office.

Since Bush came, the FBI, the NSA, and the Pentagon have been watching and keeping files on peaceful activists, and infiltrating groups like Greenpeace. In January 2007, the president announced that he's allowed to open Americans' mail. We have also learned about undisclosed Pentagon and CIA demands for citizens' financial records. It's also come to light that George Bush has authorized the installation of spy equipment into AT&T telecommunication and switching centers. Your own cable TV company or Internet provider may even have given George Bush's spies permanent tap in and cabling directly into their broadband network.

Essentially, this allows Bush's people to just listen or collect anything, anytime without hassle. All they have to do is flip a switch.

And, make no mistake here. The NSA has THE most advanced computer equipment in the world.

They have capabilities not just to store millions of citizens' telephone records and trillions of e-mail messages - but the NSA possesses the technological ability to dice, chop, connect, construe, drill into and pull together any data it wants.

With the technological abilities it possesses and the clandestine methods it uses - we have always wanted to keep American citizen data out of NSA reach. We have never wanted our own government spying on us with all of its cutting edge technology. The NSA site even boasts about the agency's abilities, albeit in a low key way:

A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing...

As the world becomes more and more technology-oriented, the Information Assurance (IA) mission becomes increasingly challenging. This mission involves protecting all classified and sensitive information that is stored or sent through U.S. government equipment. IA professionals go to great lengths to make certain that government systems remain impenetrable....

NSA employs the country's premier cryptologists. It is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States and perhaps the world. Its mathematicians contribute directly to the two missions of the Agency: designing cipher systems that will protect the integrity of U.S. information systems and searching for weaknesses in adversaries' systems and codes.

Most NSA/CSS employees, both civilian and military, are headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, centrally located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Its workforce represents an unusual combination of specialties: analysts, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, as well as customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts, managers, administrative officers and clerical assistants.

The NSA engages in data mining. Data mining is a broad dragnet. Instead of targeting you because you once received a telephone call from a person who received a telephone call from a person who is a suspected terrorist, you might be targeted because the NSA's computers have analyzed your communications and have determined that they contain certain words or word combinations, addressing information, or other factors with a frequency that deviates from the average, and which they have decided might be an indication of suspiciousness. The NSA has no prior reason to suspect you, and you are in no way tied to any other suspicious individuals -- you have just been plucked out of the crowd by a computer algorithm's analysis of your behavior.

Based on what they collect and their capabilities, it's reasonable to guess that the NSA is following a three-stage process for the broadest portion of its sweep through the communications infrastructure:

1. The Dragnet: a search for targets. In this stage, the NSA sifts through the data coursing through the arteries of our telecom systems, making use of such factors as keyword searches, telephone number and IP address targeting, and techniques such as link analysis, and "data mining." At this stage, the communications of millions of people may be scrutinized.
2. Human review: making the target list. Communications and individuals that are flagged by the system for one reason or another are presumably then subject to human review. An analyst looks at the origin, destination and content of the communication and makes a determination as to whether further eavesdropping or investigation is desired. We have absolutely no idea what kind of numbers are involved at this stage.
3. The Microscope: targeting listed individuals. Finally, individuals determined to be suspicious in phase two are presumably placed on a target list so that they are placed under the full scrutiny of the NSA's giant surveillance microscope, with all their communications captured and analyzed.

The NSA is a secret agency that performs secret work. These are the highly trained spies that collect and store e-mail and phone records, crunch the databases and rummage through with high level search functions.

So it must be legal - right? Wrong. That's the problem! It's illegal and it's wrong.

By spying on us without court warrants or congressional oversight, Bush is in violation of FISA (federal law). Bush's actions further destroy the balance of powers between the three co-equal branches of government. Most egregious, though, is the way in which Bush has been able to easily obtain assistance and cooperation from telecommunications corporations like AT&T.

What bothers me the most, though, is not the collusion between Bush and corporations to spy on us, nor even the upset of the balance of powers. These must be fixed and remediated - but what bothers me the most is Bush's violation of the U.S. Constitution, including our rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom from unlawful search and seizure by the government.

It's only been since George Bush took over that the NSA has turned its attention away from international communications and turned its vast technology to communication on American soil. It is Bush that has instructed the NSA to collect, record and store e-mails from AOL and Comcast, to monitor and record all American call histories from AT&T, among many others.

For the past five years, on presidential orders, the National Security Agency has been reading email and tapping phones without a warrant - actions explicitly forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).

If all of that hasn't been bad enough, this past summer, Bush unleashed his fear mongering machine to blackmail Congress into giving him brand new "legal" rights to wiretap and spy on us without warrant.

Despite this 30-year precedent of FISA and its explicit requirements for court oversight and warrants, the president pressured Congress to give me a last-minute Patriot-Act-style vote just before the 2007 summer recess.

So, Congress caved in and gave him a new law, set to expire in six months. The new law, called Police America Act. (Don't you hate the name of it?) This resulting legislation lifts longstanding protections between government spying and Americans' international communications. The "Police America Act" now gives the NSA a blank check to wiretap Americans without judicial oversight. Fortunately, even though Bush was able to "scare" Congress into giving him these powers, Congress was able to put a six month limit on it.

Now Congress is deliberating the permanent law that will take the place of this temporary law.

This month, our Congress is deliberating new legislation that will either legalize Bush's illegal spying or will outlaw it once and for all. Please tell your congressional representatives and senators that you want the NSA to stop spying on Americans and to return to its prior objective of spying on international criminals instead of American citizens. We can't let what Bush started here become a fixture in our government. We have to say that Bush is wrong and we have to make sure that no other presidents will be able to do this ever again.

Tell your elected officials that you are against allowing this president or any president the freedom to stockpile, store and rummage through the e-mails, phone calls and call histories of innocent Americans that have not been accused of any crimes.

We just have to end warrantless wiretapping - once and for all.

It's just like the wild west. Government out of control. We can't allow one branch of our government to eavesdrop on American citizens without any oversight from the other two branches of government. But even more than that, it's not acceptable that our government eavesdrops on us at all. It's got to stop.

Explain to your senators and representatives that it's just plain wrong to spy on Americans without congressional or court oversight. Tell them that you know it's always been illegal to spy on Americans and you are not willing for them to make legal now.

No American is beneath the law's protection.

Demand that your legislators maintain our fundamental system of checks and balances as this is the only way that American democracy will be preserved.

No one - not even a U.S. president - is above the law's limits.

(click the picture above to enlarge the NSA map)

Please talk to your legislators in Washington D.C.!

If you've never called your representative before, don't worry. Just be clear, and polite, and be sure to make all your points. Give your name, where you're from, and some indication of why you are concerned about this issue. Use the quotes provided below to make your points, and then end the call. It's that easy - but, it's so important.

Call your legislators and ask them to agree to this pledge:

Stop warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans.

Congress must stop the NSA's domestic spying, repeal the "Protect America Act," and ensure that whenever a U.S. person is the intended or unintended subject of surveillance, the government must first get a warrant.

Don't legislate in the dark.

Congress should oppose any expansion of spying authority until a full, thorough, and public investigation is complete.

Don't let the phone companies off the hook.

Congress must allow the courts to rule on the president's program by rejecting efforts to give private entities amnesty for illegally assisting the government's spying.