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On Thursday, the Obama administration finalized new rules that allow the National Security Agency to share information it gleans from its vast international surveillance apparatus with the 16 other agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. With the new changes, which were long in the works, those agencies can apply for access to various feeds of raw, undoctored NSA intelligence. Analysts will then be able to sift through the contents of those feeds as they see fit, before implementing required privacy protections. Previously, the NSA applied those privacy protections itself, before forwarding select pieces of information to agencies that...

Obama AG makes secret deal to let NSA distribute illegally obtained private information to any government agency YouTube Video clip: Judge Napolitano on AG Lynch's secret NSA deal (4:11)Here is a rough transcript of 4:11 length video Stuart Varney: Now this just coming to us. It's news to me but the judge has got it for us. Coming up, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has just signed a secret deal days before leaving office ordering the NSA to give spying data to other federal agencies. Judge Napolitano joins us for this story. What's going on? Judge Napolitano: Well, we don't...

Just days before leaving office Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order to allow any branch of government, including local law enforcement, access to the NSA’s data mine on the American people. She created a mechanism by which the Fourth Amendment can be circumvented by law enforcement agencies of any type and description, foreign and domestic, in the area of digital information.

More U.S. intelligence agencies are getting access to the raw signals intelligence the National Security Agency collects abroad. That's got some privacy advocates worried. The NSA might not intentionally target U.S. citizens, but its bulk collection of foreign communications does sweep up some Americans' phone calls, emails and other online communications as they bounce across networks overseas.

Before Obama left office, he expanded the power of the National Security Agency (NSA) to share globally intercepted personal communications, including those of Americans, with 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections. The NSA is the collection agency of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication. This includes cell phones. The new rules greatly relax longstanding security limits which dictated what the NSA may do with the information gathered by its surveillance operations. For instance, rules had been written...

This story, from the Jan. 12, 2017, edition of the New York Times , was little-remarked upon at the time, but suddenly has taken on far greater significance in light of current events: In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections. The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting...

This story, from the Jan. 12, 2017, edition of the New York Times, was little-remarked upon at the time, but suddenly has taken on far greater significance in light of current events: In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections. The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite...

With only days until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that gives the NSA virtually unlimited authority to intercept communications abroad. Previously, NSA analysts would filter out information they deemed irrelevant and mask the names...