Unit 8200

James Bamford's a guy yours truly respects to the max. He gets tech in a big way, particularly when it comes to the NSA, surveillance and the impact both have had on the behavior of mankind. His extensive interview with Edwin Snowden is the only writing, IMHO, that delves deeply into the raison d'ete as to why Snowden became a whistleblower at the level of a Daniel Ellsberg. 

To add fuel to the fire, Bamford, via Snowden, reveals just how exclusive the relationship truly is with Israel, a relationship Founding Fathers Jefferson and Washington would have prohibited, without question, back in the day.

NY TImes:

Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.

Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.

Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.

" by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments."

George Washington

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." 

Thomas Jefferson

Addendum: Check out Bamford's The Secret War, a piece on Keith Alexander, the former head of the NSA. Interesting to say the least.