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Post by avordvet on Dec 7, 2017 6:11:52 GMT -5
and its Trump's admin saying this, not obama's... Warrantless Surveillance Can Continue Even if Law Expires, Officials SayBy CHARLIE SAVAGE, DEC. 6, 2017 WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has decided that the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. can lawfully keep operating their warrantless surveillance program even if Congress fails to extend the law authorizing it before an expiration date of New Year’s Eve, according to American officials. National security officials have implored Congress for the past year and a half to extend the legal basis for the program, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, before it lapses at the end of the month. They portrayed such a bill as the “top legislative priority” for keeping the country safe. But with Congress focused on passing a major tax cut and divided over what changes, if any, to make to the surveillance program, lawmakers may miss that deadline. Hedging against that risk, executive branch lawyers have now concluded that the government could lawfully continue to spy under the program through late April without new legislation. Intelligence officials nonetheless remain intent on getting lawmakers to pass a durable extension of Section 702 by the end of the month — warning that even a stopgap short-term extension of several months, as some lawmakers have proposed, would risk throwing the program into a crisis in the spring. www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/politics/warrantless-surveillance-legislation-section-702.html
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Post by avordvet on Dec 18, 2017 6:30:05 GMT -5
The Deep State’s Christmas Present to America: Surveillance That Never EndsBy John W. Whitehead, December 11, 2017 “He sees you when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows when you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness sake!” —“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
Just in time for Christmas, the Deep State wants to give America the gift that keeps on giving: never-ending mass surveillance. I’m not referring to the kind of surveillance carried out by that all-knowing and all-seeing Jolly Old St. Nick and his informant the Elf on the Shelf (although, to be fair, they have helped to acclimate us to a world in which we’re always being watched and judged by higher authorities). No, this particular bit of Yuletide gift-giving comes courtesy of the Deep State (a.k.a. the Surveillance State, Police State, Shadow Government and black-ops spy agencies). If this power-hungry cabal gets its way, the government’s power to spy on its citizens will soon be all-encompassing and permanent. As it now stands, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency’s largest mass surveillance programs, “PRISM” and “Upstream”—is set to expire at the end of 2017. “PRISM” lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. “Upstream” lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone—the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network—and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled “targets.” Just as the USA Patriot Act was perverted from its original intent to fight terrorism abroad and was used instead to covertly crack down on the American people (allowing government agencies to secretly track Americans’ financial activities, monitor their communications, and carry out wide-ranging surveillance on them), Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans’ emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant. Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. This information is then shared with law enforcement and “routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security.” Mind you, this is about far more than the metadata collection that Edward Snowden warned us about, which was bad enough. Section 702 gives the government access to the very content of your conversations (phone calls, text messages, video chats), your photographs, your emails. As Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned, “This is not just who you send it to, but what’s in it.” Unfortunately, Big Brother doesn’t relinquish power easily. The Police State doesn’t like restrictions. www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_deep_states_christmas_present_to_america_surveillance_that_never_ends
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Post by avordvet on Jan 8, 2018 6:22:04 GMT -5
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