NSA's illegal surveillance of Americans

[juan.g71 at gmail.com (juan)]

On Sat, 27 May 2017 05:14:43 +0000 (UTC)
jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:


	"Re: NSA's illegal surveillance of Americans" 

	Lol. But surveillance of non americans is OK? And 'legal'
	surveillance of 'americans' is OK? 

	And isn't "national review" like a primary source for american
	fascism? 
	
	But seriously, who the fuck 'americans' think they are talking
	as surveillance of 'americans' was a terrible thing?


> 
> [partial quote follows]
> The NSA intentionally and routinely intercepted communications of
> American citizens in violation of the Constitution. During the Obama
> years, the National Security Agency intentionally and routinely
> intercepted and reviewed communications of American citizens in
> violation of the Constitution and of court-ordered guidelines
> implemented pursuant to federal law. The unlawful surveillance
> appears to have been a massive abuse of the governmentâ??s
> foreign-intelligence-collection authority, carried out for the
> purpose of monitoring the communications of Americans in the United
> States. While aware that it was going on for an extensive period of
> time, the administration failed to disclose its unlawful surveillance
> of Americans until late October 2016, when the administration was
> winding down and the NSA needed to meet a court deadline in order to
> renew various surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence
> Surveillance Act (FISA). The administrationâ??s stonewalling about the
> scope of the violation induced an exasperated Foreign Intelligence
> Surveillance Court to accuse the NSA of â??an institutional lack of
> candorâ?? in connection with what the court described as â??a very
> serious Fourth Amendment issue.â?? (The court is the federal tribunal
> created in 1978 by FISA; it is often referred to as a â??secret courtâ??
> because proceedings before it are classified and ex parte â?? meaning
> only the Justice Department appears before the court.) The FISA-court
> opinion is now public, available here. The unlawful surveillance was
> first exposed in a report at Circa by John Solomon and Sara Carter,
> who have also gotten access to internal, classified reports. The
> story was also covered extensively Wednesday evening by James Rosen
> and Bret Baier on Fox Newsâ??s Special Report. According to the
> internal reports reviewed by Solomon and Carter, the illegal
> surveillance may involve more than 5 percent of NSA searches of
> databases derived from what is called â??upstreamâ?? collection of
> Internet communications. As the FISA court explains, upstream
> collection refers to the interception of communications â??as they
> transit the facilities of an Internet backbone carrier.â?? These are
> the data routes between computer networks. The routes are hosted by
> government, academic, commercial, and similar high-capacity network
> centers, and they facilitate the global, international exchange of
> Internet traffic. Upstream collection from the Internetâ??s â??backbone,â??
> which accounts for about 9 percent of the NSAâ??s collection haul (a
> massive amount of communications), is distinguished from interception
> of communications from more familiar Internet service providers.
> Upstream collection is a vital tool for gathering intelligence
> against foreign threats to the United States. It is, of course, on
> foreign intelligence targets â?? non-U.S. persons situated outside the
> U.S. â?? that the NSA and CIA are supposed to focus. Foreign agents
> operating inside the U.S. are mainly the purview of the FBI, which
> conducts surveillance of their communications through warrants from
> the FISA court â?? individualized warrants based on probable cause that
> a specific person is acting as an agent of a foreign power. The NSA
> conducts vacuum intelligence-collection under a different section of
> FISA â?? section 702. It is inevitable that these section 702
> surveillance authorities will incidentally intercept the
> communications of Americans inside the United States if those
> Americans are communicating with the foreign target. This does not
> raise serious Fourth Amendment concerns; after all, non-targeted
> Americans are intercepted all the time in traditional criminal
> wiretaps because they call, or are called by, the target. But FISA
> surveillance is more controversial than criminal surveillance because
> the government does not have to show probable cause of a crime â?? and
> when the targets are foreigners outside the U.S., the government does
> not have to make any showing; it may target if it has a legitimate
> foreign-intelligence purpose, which is really not much of a hurdle at
> all. So, as noted in coverage of the Obama administrationâ??s
> monitoring of Trump-campaign officials, FISA section 702 provides
> some privacy protection for Americans: The FISA court orders
> â??minimizationâ?? procedures, which require any incidentally intercepted
> Americanâ??s identity to be â??masked.â?? That is, the NSA must sanitize
> the raw data by concealing the identity of the American. Only the
> â??maskedâ?? version of the communication is provided to other U.S.
> intelligence agencies for purposes of generating reports and
> analyses. As I have previously explained, however, this system relies
> on the good faith of government officials in respecting privacy:
> There are gaping loopholes that permit American identities to be
> unmasked if, for example, the NSA or some other intelligence official
> decides doing so is necessary to understand the intelligence value of
> the communication. While that kind of incidental collection raises
> the concerns of privacy advocates, it is a small problem compared to
> upstream collection, the technology of which poses profound Fourth
> Amendment challenges.
> 
> Read more at:
> http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447973/nsa-illegal-surveillance-americans-obama-administration-abuse-fisa-court-response
> 
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