James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, discusses the National Security Agency’s surveillance infrastructure, how the 2008 FISA Amendments Act eliminated any meaningful oversight or accountability for wiretapping, Obama’s broken promise to oppose retroactive telecom lawsuit immunity, the Catch-22 of surveillance legal challenges where a litigant can’t sue without evidence of illegal wiretapping but all such records are classified and unobtainable, the Israeli companies that provide software (alleged to contain backdoor access) and hardware to the NSA, the 9/11 Commission’s failure to mention or investigate the NSA and how turf war jealousies (and not legal prohibitions) prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information that would have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
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