We have met the enemy and he is us

Outer Limits (1963 TV series) episodes "O.B.I.T." is an 

episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. 

It first aired on 4 November 1963

"Shadow gate" told its audience the who and the what.  Remarked on Aug 15 - relevant  link here:                 

https://www.bitchute.com/video/kuwko3YFiQ0f/

This old piece tells you the where:
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/

Slightly dated now - but the details line up correctly with the larger story in "shadow gate' including:

“You can essentially trick the routers into redirecting a small subset of traffic you really care about, which you can monitor in more detail,”

"NSA had been intercepting the communications of “non-target United States persons and persons in the United States,”

"sweeping up people’s emails if they had merely mentioned particular information about surveillance targets."

Ethics, and common sense wise, the technology rapidly outpaced oversight.

We use to focus collection on 'targets'.  Inadvertent intercepts were destroyed.   It appears that subsequently, instead of targeting  collections, we began to collect everything we could, because we could.  Everything went into the barrel. (said barrel now having a storage capability undreamt of until recently
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/14/nsa-utah-data-facility )

'Privacy' was theoretically protected by the requirement to have a 'FISA' warrant to winnow details on a specific individual from the barrel.

Now we know what a total joke the FISA process was.

And we also know for certain that 'contractors' cared little for the niceties of law and regulation.

What was stored became politically irresistible to evil, power hungry politicians.

Just ask Comey and Brennan.

This 'OBIT' like monster is now a greater threat to Americans than any enemy foreign or domestic.  It facilitates Communist Chinese level control on individuals.

Rx.  Cut the plug, re engineer a target centric process and seek approval from THIS president (who uniquely well knows the grave risks involved) before implementing anything.

Oh, and free Snowden.

 PS - the same goes for the private IT megalomaniacal entities, like Google.  Too much intrusiveness, abuse of power to influence elections, we need be done with all that.

UPDATE 10/26/20 - here's very good insight into one of the apps (suits?) I was aware of

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/21/magazine/palantir-alex-karp.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab