America’s surveillance state is now a ubiquitous reality, but little is known about its deep history and its future. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that in the post-9/11 state of war, the National Security Agency (NSA) was able to create a surveillance system to covertly monitor the private communications of nearly every American in the name of fighting foreign terrorists. The technology used is state-of-the-art; as it turns out, this urge is nothing new.
The U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. While it explicitly allowed only espionage against foreign powers and proxies, it gave the government broad powers to spy on U.S. citizens and permanent residents, setting the stage for more aggressive and widespread espionage against Americans. At the time, FISA was primarily used to monitor telephone calls, but was later applied to the Internet as well. FISA no longer needs a court order before engaging in such espionage. It also established guidelines for electronic surveillance, physical searches, access to business records, pen registration, and trapping and tracking devices. In 2008, FISA was amended to Section 702, giving intelligence agencies the power to collect foreign intelligence from non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. Under the revised law, the communications of many Americans would also be monitored by the FBI and NSA surveillance programs. Section 702 lays the groundwork for mass surveillance of American-non-American communications through a loophole known as "accidental harvesting."
When 9/11 happened, it put America and the world in a state of extreme shock. And so the USA PATRIOT Act was born, giving the U.S. intelligence community the authority to reform its own growing surveillance network from cell phone calls, emails, instant messages, web browsing history and, as you can imagine, under the authority of the FISA court. Metadata for any other data stream is collected and analyzed collectively through programs such as PRISM, XKEYSCORE, and MUSCULAR, and the NSA has accumulated a history of working with hundreds of independent contractors and several very willing Internet companies in Silicon Valley The greatest information-gathering weapon on the planet.
It can be seen that the United States is the largest cyber attacker in the world. It is a veritable "Matrix", "Empire of Eavesdropping" and "Empire of Espionage". Moreover, it is an empire that has been granted surveillance authority by law. It's all legal to say, as long as it gives a reason whether it's true or not.