🚀 go-pugleaf

groups, celebrities and
*   ordinary citizens were added to the 'watch lists'. The NSA surveillance
*   was illegal and was instantly stopped [years later] when it appeared
*   that Congress might learn about the eavesdropping.

Fear, loathing, suspicion and monitoring of civil rights movements.

All it took was the thought that foreigners were influencing Americans.

That's all it took to make the massive surveillance "legal".

Of course, massive surveillance means more than just surveillance:

*   Main Justice, by Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, 1996, ISBN 0-684-81135-9
*
*   The FBI had been spying on members of the civil rights movement
*   to discredit Martin Luther King and destroy the civil rights
*   movement, government files showed. There had been burglaries
*   and illegal wiretapping on a grand scale.

Even after FISA legislation, with its strict "minimization" requirement,
CISPES & Co. happened.


Sometimes their suspicion of terrorist/foreign agent activity is laughable.

*   "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996, short version
*   
*   It was just before April Fool's day, and Virginia Bernard thought the
*   caller was one of her friends pulling a practical joke. Her husband, an
*   ex-IRS official got on the phone, and after a brief discussion was
*   convinced the man really was an FBI agent.
*   
*   Agent Emmett arrived: The seventy-three-year-old part-time teacher was
*   asked: "why did you subscribe to 'Soviet Life' and why did you write to
*   the Soviet embassy?"
*   
*   "I need