I remember reading George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 in high school and thinking, “Wow I am so glad THAT could NEVER happen in the USA”. Ah the folly of youth! As it turns out the United States government has been doing a fine imitation of Big Brother aided by every conceivable technological company in our country today-Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype, AOL, YouTube and the list goes on.

Why would the United States government, via their National Security Agency (NSA, also referred to in intelligence circles as “No Such Agency”) be interested in monitoring the every keystroke of law abiding Americans online?

Originally the program was intended to monitor foreign communications taking place via servers owned by U.S. tech companies like Google et al, since PRISM’s inception in 2007. Now it seems that PRISM related reports now account for 1 in 7 intelligence reports. That is a staggering number.

Big Brother is definitely watching!

The NSA is not supposed to be able to monitor internal U.S. communications! How is this possible or legal?

The Attorney General’s office (yes that is right, Eric Holders office-the same one that is being scrutinized due to its bosses possible lies to Congress) and the national director of intelligence issue a directive to the tech company in question-let’s just use Google for our example. Google in turn hands over access to their servers-and therefore all of the communication that goes through them-to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whose charter is to monitor for internal threats, and then the FBI passes this information on to the NSA.

How do we know that it is only the dangerous people, like terrorists, whose communication is being monitored?