We've covered how, since 9/11, the National Security Agency has spied on electronic communications of Americans without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.

The organization has done this by hiring Israeli contractors to bug the U.S. telecommunications network and building massive complexes such as their secretive $2 billion Utah spy center.

In 2010 Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post reported that "collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, and other types of communications" every day.



The American Civil Liberties Union has created this handy infographic that shows how the NSA's domestic spying program thrives with impunity today: