In the News: "Spying on the Home Front"

PBS' Frontline documentary demonstrates that the federal government has returned to the bad old days of unchecked spying on ordinary Americans. With the help of phone companies, the NSA is tapping phones and reading email without a warrant. The FBI and Pentagon are keeping files about peace activists, and placing confidential informants inside groups like Greenpeace and PETA. The FBI has delivered over 100,000 National Security Letters that demanded personal records from businesses without court approval and gagged recipients from telling anyone about the demands. All of these actions are part of a broad pattern of the executive branch using "national security" as an excuse for encroaching on the privacy and free speech rights of Americans without adequate oversight.

The ACLU is fighting back to stop expanded spying on Americans. Because of our lawsuits, federal courts have blocked the NSA from tapping our phones without a warrant and struck down a version of the National Security Letter law as unconstitutional. We have filed Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of hundreds of organizations and individuals around the country to expose wrongful FBI and Pentagon spying. We have issued reports documenting the rise of the "surveillance society". And our Washington Legislative Office continues to work to end warrantless NSA spying and to restore limitations on domestic spying by the FBI and the Pentagon.

Watch ACLU of Nevada's Gary Peck on Frontline >>

Learn More About How the ACLU Is Working to Stop Spying on Americans >>