[Absolutely fantastic, in-depth look at the origins of the NSA spying programs that have been recently revealed, and at some of the growing resistance to them. -egg]

On October 13, 2001, fifty computer servers arrived at the N.S.A.’s headquarters, in Fort Meade, Maryland. The vender concealed the identity of the N.S.A. by selling the servers to other customers and then delivering the shipments to the spy agency under police escort. According to a 2009 working draft of a report by the N.S.A.’s inspector general, which Snowden provided to Glenn Greenwald, of the Guardian, their arrival marked the start of four of the most controversial surveillance programs in the agency’s history—programs that, for the most part, are ongoing. At the time, the operation was code-named starburst.

In the days after 9/11, General Michael Hayden, the director of the N.S.A., was under intense pressure to intercept communications between Al Qaeda leaders abroad and potential terrorists inside the U.S. According to the inspector general’s report, George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A., told Hayden that Vice-President Dick Cheney wanted to know “if N.S.A. could be doing more.”

via Ryan Lizza: Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.? : The New Yorker.