USA, Russia, China and Nazi Germany

The NSA traditionally handles foreign surveillance, but it's now involved in analyzing huge amounts of data that it gets from several different domestic agencies to seek out suspicious patterns.

The NSA uses powerful programs to analyze basic data from e-mail, Internet searches, airlines, telephone records, and financial information. As much as the agency can claim it's focused on foreign threats, the truth is that it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era.

The NSA doesn't need a judge's permission to gather the data and carry out the type of analysis that gives the agency the power to build a detailed profile of someone's behavior. It's all in the name of national security, just like Nazi Germany, Russia and China.