There was another thread that discused this, and it is know that the NSA has never stopped.
their information is sold to the highest bidder.
Here is a little something I found;
Echelon
We’re all getting used to the increasing presence of “Big Brother” in our lives, mostly in the form of increasing security surveillance in our town centres and corporate property. Up until recently many of us would only have recognised this form of surveillance in our everyday lives, expecting our privacy to be paramount in the sanctity of our own homes. Certainly, this form of curtailment of our privacy in public areas is acceptable in the name of law-enforcement and anti-terrorism.That was until the E.U. started publishing findings into the activities of the N.S.A. in Europe. The Agency’s cupboards appear to be bulging with skeletons. It is now abundantly clear that the N.S.A. has been turning its Cold War surveillance capability towards America’s allies. In fact, it has the capability to eavesdrop on every electronic communication travelling across the planet. That includes all telephone networks (I’m convinced the whereabouts of mobile phone users can be pin-pointed through triangulation), faxes and e-mails. Microsoft even fit an NSAKEY into their systems to aid decryption.
This is how it works: the N.S.A. and Britain’s Government Communication’s Headquarters (GCHQ) jointly analyse a wealth of signals intelligence using a search engine called ECHELON. This pinpoints key-words of interest to America or Britain when used in private communications, and then directs the guilty message to operatives for further analysis. The level of computational power at the disposal of the intelligence agencies must be truly awesome. The point is that if you inadvertently sat one of these buzz-words, then your phone call, e-mail, fax, or whatever will be looked into. This is not fiction, but fact. Or at least according to the European Union.
This has only come to light because the Brussels administration is becoming increasingly annoyed by the perceived misuse of this system for U.S. economic interest. Complicating this is the role of Britain, an integral member of the European Union. Britain is accused of aiding her ally in economic espionage at the expense of other EU members. This comes at a time when Britain feels more isolated than ever in Europe whilst our economic performance has come into closer alignment with the States.
