Depending on the time of day, Bitcoin is up 100% (or 200% or 300%) or down 50% as the crypto-currency swings violently around in what appears a death spasm only to transform into a Tesla-like phoenician rise. But there is another crypto-related bubble that is exploding – and showing no signs of stopping. As Russia Today notes, the so-called “Snowden Effect” has seen Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the National Security Agency increase 888% this fiscal year.
“Fueled by the Edward Snowden scandal, more Americans than ever are asking the National Security Agency if their personal life is being spied on,” Yamiche Alcindor wrote for USA Today.
Indeed, the thousands of FOIA requests filed by Americans since June far outnumber the mere hundreds that it received annually in previous years.
…
Shortly after the first Snowden leak appeared on June 6, however, the agency became flooded with 1,302 requests almost immediately. During the following three months, the paper reported, the NSA received 2,538 requests, the likes of which have inundated the government staffers tasked with responding for the open records requests.
Pamela Phillips, the chief of the NSA Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act Office, told the paper that “This was the largest spike we’ve ever had.”
“We’ve had requests from individuals who want any records we have on their phone calls, their phone numbers, their e-mail addresses, their IP addresses, anything like that,” Phillips said.
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[The NSA appears to be denying many of these requests]
“[Y]our request is denied because the fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter,” the agency wrote him.
“Our adversaries are likely to evaluate all public responses related to these programs,” the NSA said at the time to Collier. “Were we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries’ compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”
Months later, the NSA is apparently still giving concerned Americans the same runaround.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/M0AgoAsAaqI/story01.htm Tyler Durden