Ronald Reagan - Takepart.comDigging Deeper Into NSA Spying Uncovers Unexpected Link to Reagan Administration
If Americans want to understand how their government justifies sweeping intelligence-gathering measures, they need to familiarize themselves with a little-known executive order from the Reagan era: E.O. 12333.
It's being dubbed the real source of power behind the government's dragnet surveillance—not any of the post-9/11 legislation that responded to modern terror threats, such as parts of the Patriot Act or the FISA Amendments Act that created secret courts to handle terror surveillance authorization. The order dates to 1981 and may be used as justification to conduct surveillance in the United States, according to documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union. "The documents make it clearer than ever that the government's vast surveillance apparatus is collecting information—including from Americans—about much more than just terrorist threats," wrote Alex Abdo, an ACLU attorney.
