James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory, discusses the NSA’s Prism surveillance program and Verizon phone log scandal; the failure of unprecedented government spying to stop terrorism in the US; why collecting massive amounts of irrelevant data makes finding terrorists harder, not easier; the government’s “automated conspiracy theories;” the surprising NSA PowerPoint and FISA warrant leaks; the plausibility of the NSA recording every single phone call; and former Senator Frank Church’s prescient warning of an NSA-enabled tyranny in the US.

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