How the Spooks at the NSA Long Ago Got Around the Law Prohibiting Eavesdropping on Americans

They got the Canadians, specifically the Communications Security Establishment, to do it for them:

[Mike]Frost, [author of Spyworld,] for one, says CSE has carried out missions for both London and Washington that they deemed too delicate domestically to be handled by their own intelligence agencies.

The NSA works with the CSE so that the CSE can spy on Americans and then the CSE gives the data to the NSA, and vice versa. Both of those scum-sucking fascist groups thereby collude in breaking the spirit of each other's restraints. The press stays silent unless someone rubs their faces in it (I found no mention of the book "Spyworld" in either the New York Times' or the Washingon Post's archives).

This has been going on far longer than just since the Bush Administration began directly monitoring all electronic communications in this country. The only thign that Bush and Cheney did was to stop using the Canadians as cutouts.

All of this, of course, is just peachy with the politicians of both countries, who do their utmost to ensure that any revelation of the depth of the spooks' intrusion into the affairs of American and Canadian citizens goes unremarked. More and more, the idea that we have privacy or a freedom to be left alone is an illusion (and any Teabagger who blames President Obama alone for this is an idiot).

So if you want a conversation to have some expectation of privacy, the only way to do so is face-to-face. The FBI might put forth the effort to try and bug it, but at least you can talk without the NSA's enormous ears listening in.

(H/T to Allan S, who mentioned all of this in his comments here)