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122 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

and student loans to credit scores and overdrafts in personal bank accounts. This ubiquitous surveillance of virtually every non-cash transaction came about because of advances in computer technology that made it economically feasible to mine such data.

Snowden's concern about NSA domestic surveillance is certainly not misplaced. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the NSA has increasingly played a role in this surveillance state, not by its own choice, but because Congress mandated it. In 2001, it empowered the NSA to obtain and archive data on American citizens. Accordingly, the NSA obtained the billing records of customers from phone and Internet companies and archived these records. The bulk collection of these billing records was intended to build a searchable database for the government that could be used to trace the history of the telephone and Internet activities in the United States of FBI-designated foreign terrorists and spies abroad. The government's rationale for keeping these anti-terrorist programs secret from the public was that it did not want the foreign suspects to realize their communications in America were being monitored.

The public only learned that the phone company was routinely turning over its billing records on June 6, 2013, when Snowden disclosed it to The Guardian and The Washington Post. The documents he provided the journalists showed that the NSA had been obtaining phone records collected by Verizon every three months. While this revelation might have shocked the American public, the NSA had not acted on its own. It had acted under a warrant issued by a secret court established by Congress in 1978 as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for each request for records. Congress empowered the FISA court, whose judges are appointed by the president, to hear cases and authorize search warrants in secret in cases involving national security.

As its name implies, the FISA court was meant to deal with matters bearing on foreign intelligence activities in the United States. That restriction changed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A month after the attacks, Congress expanded the purview of the FISA court by passing the USA Patriot Act (an acronym that stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). Part of the

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