Then the NSA built the Utah Data Center known as "the Black Vault" for nothing...
BUT and it’s a big but.....
They could still be put on Double Secret Probation.
They can get all they need by monitoring internet searches and social media.
The law of diminishing returns on TMI?
they’ll still keep doing it..
Suurre. That's what they WANT us to think. In reality - they continue to spy on us.
Oh, boy.
Whatever we already know the NSA has done...the totality has got to be way, way worse...
I still remember when Jimmy Carter wanted to use automated systems to listen in on private phone calls. If certain words were mentioned, automatic recording would start.
What would they do with the excess computing power? Try to find the next largest Mersenne prime? I doubt it.
Programs don’t shrink unless they are explicitly and drastically cut.
In grand style 3 months ago the NSA claimed they’d ALREADY stopped all this.
So let’s review:
1. We never do domestic SigInt intercepts
2. We STOPPED going it
3. We are THINKING about discontinuing it
So they’ll say and have said ANYTHING.
Someone has to analyze and archive every text emoji sent by every teenage girl in America. Sure sounds like a waste of tax money to me.
The only reason they wold do this is if they have something better....................
“Oddly, no mention at all is made of the unfolding scandal of the use of NSA data to spy on the Trump campaign.”
They are planning to scrap the program and destroy all the records? Why would that even link to Obama’s secret spying?
Then the NSA built the Utah Data Center known as "the Black Vault" for nothing...
they don’t have to anymore- the TV industry made everyone convert to digital, and have cable boxes in rooms, and most people have new ‘smart TV’s with voice remotes which listen in constantly, and companies like amazon with their alexa listen in constantly- so now the cable companies and online merchant companies are the new NSA
If the data is collected by government it will be used to further the political interests of those in power.
Always and forever.
Sure, because most phone calls are scammers trying to sell insurance, or telling you the IRS is after them.
Bureaucrats would never give up that kind of power in a million years. Not to mention the 800 billion they spend on facilities to collect that data. Besides, they claimed they don’t do that.. ..
I don’t buy it. But in any case they can still simply regularly exchange all the captured communications of other nation’s citizens for all the captured communications of US citizens.
Freegards
nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure
Oddly, no mention at all is made of the unfolding scandal of the use of NSA data to spy on the Trump campaign.
The problem was alleged access by uncleared contractors to the family jewels. At this point we've crossed the line between potential abuse and actual abuse and the argument isn't hypothetical anymore. We have already seen corruption at the highest levels of government lead to the release of highly classified technical data to the Chinese during the Clinton administration and the deliberate leakage of surveillance data to the equally corrupt media during the 0bama administration. The real issue is not that the legal safeguards are costing more than the data are worth, it's that they're no damn good.