A Look Back at Domestic Gov’t Surveillance in the George W. Bush Era (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

The 2007 documentary “Spying on the Home Front” examined then-President George W. Bush’s domestic war on terrorism and its implications for Americans’ civil liberties. (Aired 2007)

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The attacks on 9/11 altered America in many ways, from barricades and body frisks in airports to greater government scrutiny of people’s records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The watershed, officials told FRONTLINE in the 2007 documentary “Spying on the Home Front,” was the government’s shift to a strategy of pre-emption at home — not just prosecuting terrorists for breaking the law, but trying to find and stop them before they struck.

The documentary probed the ramifications of that strategy, explored how the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program worked at the time, and examined various viewpoints on whether the Bush administration violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and infringed on constitutional protections.

Read an update involving an AT&T case featured in the film:

Watch FRONTLINE’s later films on U.S. government surveillance programs:

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#Documentary #Surveillance #CivilLiberties #NSA

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