wall street journal reports domestic spying by NSA wider than anyone thought -- even post-9/11

in a ground-breaking article this morning,
the wall street journal details the vast, and
thus far wholly-undisclosed role the national
security agency took in spying on american citizens,
after the september 11 attacks. go -- read it all:

. . .NSA's role in domestic intelligence gathering reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the spy programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks. . .

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected. . .

astonishing. or perhaps not so.

"suspected" -- not probable cause, and
no judge -- u.s. citizens, if "suspected"
of any connection to a connection to
terrorism. that is unamerican.