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The NSA is officially not supposed to be spying on the citizens of the USA. That’s the FBI’s job technically... as the USA has no dedicated domestic intelligenc
by techdragon 6y ago
The NSA is officially not supposed to be spying on the citizens of the USA. That’s the FBI’s job technically... as the USA has no dedicated domestic intelligence agency. There are a number of agencies with limited domestic intelligence roles tasks with specific kinds of intelligence work such as the intelligence branches of the US Treasury, the Department of Energy, and the Coast Guard... but there’s no USA agency equivalent of the United Kingdom’s MI5.
To extend the comparison, the CIA is roughly the USA’a MI6 and the NSA is very roughly equivalent to the GCHQ but not exactly as the NSA are not meant to spy domestically while the GCHQ don’t have that explicit limitation.
- Lendal 6y agoThey didn't need to spy. They already knew and didn't care. The president held a speech in the morning, addressing his supporters who had traveled from all over the country to come to Washington. He told the crowd to storm the Capitol over the loudspeaker, and that he would lead them in doing so. He didn't. Instead he returned to the White House. But the crowd did what they were told anyway. (People do that a lot these days. They do what they're told.)
- nerdponx 6y agoRegardless of what it officially is and is not supposed to do, the NSA and not the FBI is the organization that developed programs like PRISM. The point is that the US federal government has a huge intelligence organization, with a huge amount of resources invested in dragnet data collection and surveillance on anyone and everyone. The specific 3-letter organization that is technically supposed to be looking at and taking action based on that data isn't that relevant.