Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Justice Department argued that since it placed the microphone on the outside of the
telephone booth, it did not intrude into the space occupied by Katz [19]. In
Charles Katz
v. United States
, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Katz. Justice Potter Stewart wrote
that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places” [22]. Katz entered the phone
booth with the reasonable expectation that his conversation would not be heard, and
what a person “seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may
be constitutionally protected” [22].
During World War II, the US government censored all messages entering and leaving the
country, meaning US intelligence agencies had access to all telegram traffic. At the end of
the war, the censorship bureaucracy was shut down, and the Signal Security Agency (pre-
decessor to the National Security Agency) wanted to find a new way to get access to tele-
gram traffic. It contacted Western Union Telegraph Company, ITT Communications,
and RCA Communications, and asked them to allow it to make photographic copies of
all foreign government telegram traffic that entered, left, or transited the United States.
In other words, the Signal Security Agency asked these companies to break federal law in
the interests of national security. All three companies agreed to the request. The Signal
Security Agency gave this intelligence-gathering operation the name “Shamrock.”
When the National Security Agency (NSA) was formed in 1952, it inherited Op-
eration Shamrock. The sophistication of the surveillance operation took a giant leap
forward in the 1960s, when the telegram companies converted to computers. Now the
contents of telegrams could be transmitted electronically to the NSA, and the NSA could
use computers to search for key words and phrases.
In 1961 Robert Kennedy became the new attorney general of the United States, and
he immediately focused his attention on organized crime. Discovering that information
about mobsters was scattered piecemeal among the FBI, IRS, Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), and other agencies, he convened a meeting in which investigators
from all of these agencies could exchange information. The Justice Department gave the
names of hundreds of alleged crime figures to the NSA, asking that these figures be put
on its “watch list.” Intelligence gathered by the NSA contributed to several prosecutions.
Also during the Kennedy administration, the FBI asked the NSA to put on its watch
list the names of US citizens and companies doing business with Cuba. The NSA sent
information gathered from intercepted telegrams and international telephone calls back
to the FBI.
During the Vietnam War, the Johnson and Nixon administrations hypothesized that
foreign governments were controlling or influencing the activities of American groups
opposed to the war. They asked the NSA to put the names of war protesters on its
watch list. Some of the people placed on the watch list included the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver,
pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, folksinger Joan Baez, and actress Jane Fonda.
In 1969 President Nixon established the White House Task Force on Heroin Sup-
pression. The NSA soon became an active participant in the war on drugs, monitoring
