The US Justice Department has wiretapped the phones of more Americans in the last two years than the entire decade before it, and federal surveillance targeting the Internet usage of US civilians has surged wildly, new FOIA documents reveal.
The American Civil Liberties Union published documents late Wednesday that they received from the Justice Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request the organization filed earlier this year. According to the papers, certain phone-tapping procedures have increased by 60 percent between 2009 and 2011, and the surveillance of email and other Internet data has been authorized in court by an increase of 361 percent during the same span.