Newly disclosed documents that show the US government spied on several prominent Muslim-Americans for years demonstrate that America is “no longer a free country,” an American former university lecturer said.
The National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) covertly monitored the emails of five Muslim civil rights activists, academics and lawyers, according to a report published Tuesday by journalists Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain in The Intercept, citing leaked NSA documents provided by Snowden.
The five individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called “FISA recap”—short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The spreadsheet shows 7,485 email addresses, mostly of foreigners, that were monitored between 2002 and 2008.
“The United States is no longer a free country and it won’t be free until we rise up in another American revolution, hopefully a non-violent one, and reinstate our Constitution,” said Kevin Barrett, who’s also a journalist, radio host and activist in Madison, Wisconsin.
“The American people are now just complete sitting ducks for this kind of NSA spying and government blackmail, Barrett told Press TV in an interview on Wednesday.
“Any American can be targeted, any American can be manipulated and controlled through this message,” he added.
“They’re being manipulated by the NSA so that they would be forced to cooperate with the FBI. This is a common tactic that’s been used against the Muslim community,” Barrett said.
