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US Senators Concerned With Surveillance Bill "Loophole"
zer0point writes "The law lets U.S. agencies monitor the communications of foreigners outside the U.S. But two senators are questioning whether a loophole allows the storage and search of messages from Americans that are picked up inadvertently while foreigners are being monitored. The intelligence community has repeatedly said it takes steps to minimize the data collected on Americans. Among the senators’ concerns: that the administration hasn’t been able to estimate how many people in the U.S. have had their information reviewed under the program."
I suspect the truth is "hasn't been willing to".
People have been willing to ignore these sorts of things since they can at least pretend it's probably doesn't involve their own information. If the truth came out, and the government admitted it was electronically sifting through virtually all internal US communications... I suspect people would start to get riled up over it.
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When I clicked on the article I was wholly unsurprised to find Ron Wyden was one of the senators. Every time there's something in the news about a bit of sanity coming from a senator, it seems to have Ron Wyden's name. It's encouraging that there's a senator like that out there, but it's discouraging that it's only 1% of them. I wish we could get one or two of those for my state.
But two senators are questioning whether a loophole allows the storage and search of messages from Americans that are picked up inadvertently while foreigners are being monitored. The intelligence community has repeatedly said it takes steps to minimize the data collected on Americans.
What does that 2nd sentence even mean and why was it included? Either they are allowed, which case no need to minimize the data on Americans or they are not allowed to. "Taking steps to minimize" means nothing quantifiable (up to 100% reduced!).
Even assuming I trust everyone here, that is still a totally meaningless and irrelevant statement included in the article.
I personally don't see the huge issue with this, unless we are seeing a rash of prosecutions based on such evidence.
"We have sought repeatedly to gain an understanding of how many Americans have had their phone calls or emails collected and reviewed under this statute, but we have not been able to obtain even a rough estimate of this number," Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado wrote ...
The senators said in the report that the Director of National Intelligence had told them it was not feasible to come up with such a number.
If nothing else, I worry that even the few senators who may be interested in protecting American rights are blatantly snubbed by the CIA when trying to do so. That doesn't concern you?
Secret court decides that its reason to exist is legal..... news at 11:00
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Before 9/11, the government already had a law in place allowing them to place wiretaps FIRST and then request a warrant up two two weeks after the fact. Post 9/11, after the Bush administration got caught systematically placing and maintaining wiretaps without a warrant, they asked for legal approval for US security agencies to use their own discretion on placing wiretaps without need of a warrant, ever. They argued the current law, requiring the eventual issue of a warrant after the fact, to be unworkable because of the sheer volume of communications they wanted to monitor.
At that point, a lot of people who don't normally buy into conspiracy theories came to the conclusion the government intended to data-mine all telecommunications traffic in some manner. Now, we have an NSA facility being constructed in Utah - slated for completion next year, I believe - that has the openly stated purpose of doing just this.
So, yeah - I think it's safe to assume the government is monitoring me, you, and every other US citizen.
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