The word surveillance is the French word for “watching over”; “sur” means “from above” and “veiller” means “to watch”. Surveillance has become a real threat to our privacy, because our government has unprecedented access to almost every aspect of our lives.

Spying on communities is nothing new in America. In August of 1945, the NSA was “given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT.” Authorization was given to most agencies and there were no warrants issued.

Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.” The result of this was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978.

President George W. Bush changed the rules of FISA, which was put in place to regulate the NSA. The Bush administration implied that the Executive Branch has unitary authority for warrantless surveillance, which many thought was a violation of FISA.

And then we have Room 641A. This was when AT&T “allegedly” partnered with NSA in 2003 and was later exposed in 2006. Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco.

Mark Klein was a former AT&T technician who leaked knowledge about the company cooperating with NSA. Hardware was installed to monitor Americans. After Klein came out with this information, it was later discovered that there may be “black rooms” (like 641A) that are all over the country. There are at least twenty.

Why are we spying on the home front? Will innocent people be targeted with all of this data mining? What is there to know? Are there any more partners that share with companies?