One scandal after another has been engulfing the Obama Administration.

Now it has been revealed that Obama’s NSA can spy on virtually all Americans.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Deputy Director of the NSA, John C. Inglis, told Congress that the NSA conducts “three-hop” analysis. Three-hop means that the “government can look at the phone data of a suspected terrorist, plus the data of all of the contacts, then all of those people’s contacts, and all of those people’s contacts. If the average person calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.”

Essentially, what this boils down to, is that every American could be targeted and spied on by the Obama Administration.

The Electric Frontier Foundation wrote:

According to an unusually blunt Senate investigation of so-called “fusion centers” released last month, the TIDE [i.e. suspected terrorist] database is also full of information of innocent people that have nothing to do with terrorism. The report gave examples of: a TIDE profile of a person whom the FBI had already cleared of any connection to terrorism, a TIDE profile of a two-year old-boy, and even a TIDE profile of Ford Motor Company.

ARS Technica reported:

When the first revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) widespread collection of phone call metadata and Internet traffic began to surface, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham noted that for those not talking to terrorists on the phone, “We don’t have anything to worry about. I’m glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to.”

Turns out the data collection is not so limited. In testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis said that the NSA’s probing of data in search of terrorist activity extended “two to three hops” away from suspected terrorists. Previously, NSA leaders had said surveillance was limited to only two “hops” from a suspect.

If you’ve ever played “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” or used LinkedIn to try to reach someone professionally, you know how small the world of interconnected contacts can be.  When you use big data tools to mine for relationships, the world gets even smaller. That third hop in connections greatly expands the probability of innocent people worldwide being scooped up into the NSA’s surveillance machine to include a good-sized share of American citizens—citizens who Senator Graham said “don’t have anything to worry about.”

As you read this article, you are one hop away from me, and two hops away from Marilyn Manson (don’t ask).

It has been theorized that everyone is interconnected by “six degrees of separation.” This gives the government more leverage to spy on anyone in this country.

Do you think the Obama Administration has overstepped the boundaries, with regards to our privacy? Let us know your thoughts below.