The Bush administration was controversial for many reasons, but perhaps none more so than the Patriot Act. Drafted while the dust was still settling from September 11th, the bill gave unprecedented surveillance powers to U.S. security agencies for the identification and apprehension of international and domestic terrorist suspects.

What made the Patriot Act controversial were the Title II surveillance provisions, particularly roving wire taps, which allowed agencies to submit warrants which did not specify all common carriers and third parties, and "sneak and peek" warrants, which permitted the execution of a warrant prior to the notification of the subject (this provision was overruled in 2007).

While civil libertarians and various interest groups in the U.S. criticised these measures (often citing them as violations of the fourth amendment), the Act did not permit agencies to engage in warrantless surveillance of American citizens. However, that did not stop the National Security Agency...

In 2005, the New York Times broke a story on warrantless wiretapping by the U.S. government. In 2006, they further reported than the NSA had obtained access to financial records in the SWIFT database, which holds information on international wire transfers in and out of the US.

In 2006, Wired magazine spoke with a former NSA analyst Russell Tice, who revealed the existence of a secret NSA data mining room in the AT&T network operations centre in Bridgeton, Missouri. The room was illegally monitoring domestic phone and data traffic.

Shortly after the story went to print, Mark Klein, an AT&T employee, came forward with information about a similar room in San Francisco which was providing a real-time data feed to the NSA.

The revelations led to lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon for cooperating with the government's illegal surveillance.

Last week, Tice spoke with MSNBC and revealed the NSA had obtained large volumes of domestic credit card transaction data and were blending it with wiretap information to keep tabs on thousands of Americans.

Tice did not reveal where the credit card data came from. It's possible it was obtained by 'sniffing' U.S. communication backbones or, more controversially, it may have been voluntarily surrendered to the NSA by U.S. financial institutions.

If the later occurred, it could have huge ramifications for the financial institutions involved, who may be subject to the same legal action as AT&T and Verizon.

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