Americas Surveillance State 1-2

The first part of this series is called The Surveillance Machine and gives an overview of how much data is being collected and analysed by the American intelligence agencies, how historically this came about, and how they get help from the giant corporations in Silicon Valley.

The second part named Inside the NSA: How do they Spy? looks specifically at the National Security Agency and their methods of data collection and how they have been spying even on their allies’ leaders, as well as unlawfully on American citizens.

The programme is pieced together around interviews with people who have been on the inside of the intelligence apparatus, such as Mike Gerson and Ray McGovern, and others who have studied it, like Andy Greenberg and Glenn Greenwald.

The documentary also relies heavily on people like William Binney, Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden who blew the whistle on how heavily expanded surveillance has become since the beginning of the century. There is not a lot of new information, but it is a fair summary of what is known.