I love how it starts with this, which is so crystal clear but has obviously been violated on every conceivable level from your local police to the NSA.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,

against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated,

and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,

and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So what part of "persons" "effects" "unreasonable" and "particular" has every level of government decided to purposely not understand?

Definitely "unreasonable", when you're a crazy paranoid government full of weapons nothing seems unreasonable.

Basically whatever 5 justices of the Supreme Court decide is "reasonable."

Of those 'particular' is the one that is most powerful to me, it means that warrants should be specific naming person, place, date, time and probable cause.

Any other warrant is a general one.

It's all related. Probable Cause is keystone.

When they have evidence of wrong doing, government should be allowed to search when all three branches agree (legislative passing law, executive investigating, judicial granting warrant).

They can't go fishing. They can't violate privacy to find wrongdoing.

It has all been eroded overtime. Really need a reboot...

The EFF is doing some great work. I just made my annual donation, a bit early this year. Will likely make another one.

https://supporters.eff.org/donate/

One thing that in hindsight may be related that's not on the timeline is the DoJ losing its lawsuit against Google in January 2006.

"Google Resists U.S. Subpoena of Search Data" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/technology/20google.html?p...)

"Judge tells DoJ 'No' on search queries" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/judge-tells-doj-no-on...)

According to the slides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg), the PRISM timeline begins the next year on 9/11/2007, and Google is added on January 14, 2009, almost 3 years to the day after the the DoJ ruling and only a few days before Obama takes office.

In a Q&A after a talk at Stanford in 2006, Marissa Mayer is asked, "How much information does Google share with the Federal Government?"

Here is her answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYKFWqVVzg#t=1819

~30:15 for those with devices that dont skip to the linked time.

Why does nobody remember the story of 1998 when NSA and Microsoft were caught at including backdoors into Windows?

CNN article (1998) [ http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/ ]

Heise article (1999) [ http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html ]

Because those of us that remember also remember it was basically a hoax.

Here is a rundown of 'incident' happened -

Researcher finds variable named _NSAKEY ... ...

That's it. From there we go to the la la land of conspiracy theories based entirely on the name of a variable.

But I'm just some guy on the internet. There's also this - http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicros...

I thought of posting about the _NSAKEY some time ago, but searched HN and found quite a few references, without much discussion. It seems (for reasons I cannot understand) to be greatly ignored. I find it to be particularly relevant post-Snowden.

Even back when it was first discovered it seemed to be forgotten virtually overnight - everyone seemed to buy into Microsoft's feeble explanation.

How is 1978 to 2000 blank? Were all the cool kids who added random NSA filter bait to their usenet and email sigs in the 90's just watching too much x-files?

Maybe this is why I lack the same level of outrage as the kids do over Snowden's disclosures: I've pretty much always assumed the NSA has always had pretty much everything (along with the Russians and the Chinese and I guess the Time Warner Corporation and now Google).

In the cold war, US needed to maintain a image of being free'er than the oppressive international communism. They also suspected evey shrubbery to have a spy in them.

As such, I think covert activities had a natural upper limit on how much activity it could do without upsetting things. Incidents could be hushed (and at a very more effective manner than doay), but too much, and you get a Watergate scandal. As a result, 80s and 90s US didnt have that many scandals in the same league as wikileaks and Snowden's disclosures.

There was more solid delineation of turf between the FBI and CIA/NSA for some decades as well: the former was responsible for domestic intelligence and the latter for foreign operations. Hence most of the domestic abuses you read about in that period, like COINTELPRO, came from the FBI.

Anyone paying attention in the 80s and 90s were well aware of Echelon, and protested it as the capability to do exactly what we are talking about with the NSA today.

To claim what you have indicates that you may not have been interested in this topic at that time. I have followed echelon claims since 1992.

Wow. An amazingly thorough timeline that, while unfortunately reads in a weird format, is definitely chilling the more you read. You can easily see how post-9/11 had changed pretty much everything. It all happened so fast after that.

This would be more useful if it didn't omit certain key developments in order to further the EFF agenda: for example, missing is the October 2011 ruling in which the FISA court declared some aspects of the NSA's programs unconstitutional. In November 2011 it allowed the programs to continue after required changes were made.

In other words, it omits events where the FISA court was actually doing it's job of regulating the NSA. As the timeline stands, it's hard to take seriously.

Incredible summary of information.

Not crazy about the random left/right text but okay I can deal with it.

Was the report that Bush ignored, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike US", a product of the NSA? Should it be on that timeline?

Someone should make this horizontal, I am sure someone will.

I believe I read somewhere that Edward Snowden tried to express his concern over the extent of domestic surveillance to his boss at the NSA, and in response his boss revoked his access to key systems.

I can no longer find anything that indicates that. I also do not see it listed in this timeline.

Does anyone know if Snowden went to his boss at the NSA before leaking to the Guardian?

Also, I heard that Snowden posted a rant to a blog post about his concerns under his internet handle. I cannot find that anymore either.

July 14, 2004 "Secret Surveillance Court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Signs First Order" - The day collecting bulk internet metadata continues without interruption.

Finally, a reference to easily point out the ignorance in those who try to politicize NSA spying. Both sides suck when it comes to this issue - deal with it.

For those of you asking why some related item is excluded:

All of the evidence found in this timeline can also be found in the Summary of Evidence we submitted to the court in Jewel v. National Security Agency (NSA)

There is clearly more information that simply cannot be admitted as evidence in a legal case.

I wonder what the current state of domestic spying would look like if the 9/11 attacks had never happened or had been thwarted.

The war on drugs or the war on (child)pornography would have been stepped up instead. But terror is so much more effective.

Took me a moment: scroll to the bottom if you want to read chronologically.

There is an "Oldest First" button that resorts the timeline.

I completely missed this. Thanks.

The little drop downs on every item contain a whole pile of information too.