Posted on 10/13/2013 1:17:06 PM PDT by Libloather
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday. The court authorizes the program for only limited time periods and requires that the government submit new requests every several months for re-authorization.
The existence of the bulk phone data collection was one of the most controversial revelations from the leaks by Edward Snowden.
The NSA uses the program to collect records such as phone numbers, call times and call durations on all U.S. phone calls—but not the contents of any conversations, according to the administration.
The NSA collects the records from the phone companies and compiles them in a massive database. NSA analysts are only allowed to search the database if there is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that a phone number is connected to terrorism.
Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, said the office decided to announce the court decision, which is usually kept secret, "in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the telephony metadata collection program."
Numerous lawmakers have expressed outrage at the NSA's collection of records of millions of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the original author of the Patriot Act, are working on legislation that would prohibit the NSA from conducting bulk data collection.
“While I appreciate the recent efforts by the Court and the administration to be more transparent, it is clear that transparency alone is not enough," Leahy said in a statement. "There is growing bipartisan consensus that the law itself needs to be changed in order to restrict the ability of the government to collect the phone records of millions of law-abiding Americans.”
“NSA analysts are only allowed to search the database if there is a “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that a phone number is connected to terrorism. “
Such as the person is a member of the tea party, posts on FR, goes to church, is white, a conservative or believes in the Constitution.
... as opposed to being merely a contemplator of “workplace violence.”
HF
Cruz? Paul?? They are pretty dam quiet about the NSA.
If you post on a site like FR, you can say whatever you want about ObamaCare.
The NSA already has plenty of data that would identify who you are and what you think generally about such things. So does Google. The NSA doesn’t much care about what you think (for now, anyway), and Google’s trying to figure out how to make a buck off of their information. It isn’t the end of the world just yet; it’s just laying the groundwork.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday.
Gosh, that’s great.
The U.S. Congress says they don’t like it, the electorate says they don’t like, even the rest of the Judiciary says they don’t like it.
No matter. The FISA court simply decides on its own what the laws of America are, and does so in secret lest the Serfs find out.
Constitution? What’s that?
There’s only Mr. Bates and his little Star Chamber. That’s all that matters.
So they are doing us a favor by letting us know they are not constrained by the Bill of Rights.
Great....
Cellphone metadata is just a tiny part of NSA surveillance.
To discover what they are doing you don’t need to rely on documents leaked by Snowden. Just consider the NSA’s capabilities and realize that anything that is possible using those capabilities is exactly what is being done.
They have the internet tapped at all the strategic locations and are gathering all the data.
They are using every hackers trick known to compromise the computers of anyone they take an interest in.
They have a system of large NRO satellites in geosynchronous orbit looking down at all points on the Earth.
The gain of these birds is so great that it’s the same as having a receiver a few feet from any rf emission source on the planet. If you have a good amateur telescope you can see these sats as stationary spots of light in the Clarke Belt...the stars appear to move behind them.
They have a silicon chip fab and make their own ASIC chips for decryption use. They also are certainly making compromised chips that look exactly like many others.
They are putting back-doors into routers, motherboards, hard disk controllers...etc etc. If you can think of a nefarious use of custom silicon then they are doing it.
The NRO sats capabilities makes it both possible and very likely that rf signals emitted from a custom integrated circuit inside virtually any device could be detected and relayed back to the NSA ground stations. The same technology is appearing in off the shelf ICs now at low cost...stuff intended for the “Internet of Things” These commercial chips are only usable at a few hundred feet or so...but remember that the gain of the NRO birds is such that a signal this weak is easily readable. These sats are the equal of the Deep Space Tracking system used to exchange data with the Mars rovers....and they are only 22,300 miles above the equator.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is supposed to spy on FOREIGN terrorists inside the US. Since then the government considers us foreigners, when can we sign up for foreign student aid? A free vacation ticket back to whatever country I say I’m from? Any other freebie perks we’re now eligible for?
Wake me up when the GOP House kills their budget or frog marches SOMEONE to jail (for a VERY. LONG. TIME)
Otherwise, it’s simply pointing fingers at a program that the GOP started that has gotten out of control that they no longer wish to reign in.
Party of small gov’t my ass
Isn’t this a violation of the Fourth Amendment? or doesn’t
that matter anymore?
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