By Andy Greenberg – Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act Requirement and released Thursday (Sep 27) show a massive spike in “non-content” surveillance by federal law enforcement over the last two years, jumping 60% from 23,535 cases in 2009 to 37,616 in 2011. Those “pen register” and “trap and trace” orders, which watch only who a surveillance target communicates with rather than the content of his or her communications and therefore don’t require a warrant, were aimed at more than 80,000 Americans in 2011, a spike that means more Americans’ communications were watched by this type of communication in the last two years than in the entire previous decade, according to the ACLU’s count. more> http://tinyurl.com/busvldv
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- Big Brother Watch: Department of Justice Warrantless Digital Spying Way Up in Past Two Years (reason.com)
By Paul McNamara – Of course, the real reason 
