Mass Surveillance in America: A Timeline of Loosening Laws and Practices................

[wandy]

This may help clarify the timing and evolution of the current state of surveillance. Consider it a data point.
Please do not accept any of this information on faith in the manner of a good Teapublican accepting anything said by Rush Limbaugh as gospel truth.
Should you consider any part of this timeline suspicious, fact check it and append identifying bullshit as bull shit.

1978 After a post-Watergate Senate investigation documented abuses of government surveillance, Congress passes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to regulate how the government can monitor suspected spies or terrorists in the U.S. The law establishes a secret court that issues warrants for electronic surveillance or physical searches of a “foreign power” or “agents of a foreign power” (broadly defined in the law)

IMHO this was the point where surveillance left the Mad Magazine world of spy vs. spy and became accepted practice.

2004 In what would become one of the most famous moments of the Bush Administration, presidential aides Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales show up at the hospital bed of John Ashcroft. Their purpose? To convince the seriously ill attorney general to sign off on the extension of a secret domestic spying program.

2004: Why the ink wasn't even dry on Obama's fake birth certificate.

And the rest here.....
http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-timeline