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NCTC Gets Vast Powers To Spy On U.S. Citizens
interval1066 writes "In a breathtaking new move by (another) little-known national security agency, the personal information of all U.S. citizens will be available for casual perusal. The 'National Counterterrorism Center' (I've never heard of this org) may now 'examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.' This is different from past bureaucratic practice (never mind due process) in that a government agency not in the list of agencies approved to to certain things without due process may completely bypass due process and store (for up to 5 years) these records, the organization doesn't need a warrant, or have any kind of oversight of any kind. They will be sifting through these records looking for 'counter-insurgency activity,' supposedly with an eye to prevention. If this doesn't wake you up and chill you to your very bone, not too sure there is anything that will anyway."
With enough media attention this will be shut down.
I mean really. TFS has a link to Wikipedia (OK, now we know what the NCC is and I guess it's not a space ship), then a paywalled article.
OK, I'm willing to go along with the concept that the US Federal government has gotten even more intrusive however, a little real info would be nice. Very nice. How about taking 30 seconds more and finding a better link.
I know some feel that the ACLU is a bit on the left wing insane side, but it's a nice balance to the the WSJ right wing insane. And the blog is at least free, readable and nominally interesting.
tl;dr - we're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If we were to admit that Barack Obama is no less fascist than his predecessors over the past few decades (perhaps even further back), we would be forced to commit the ultimate evil: voting third party. Which I did.
Palm trees and 8
You are giving yourself an excuse. Maybe that is true, but you are ignoring the many, many ways the U.S. government is VERY corrupt. The U.S. financial system steals trillions of dollars. The kill-other-people-and-destroy-property groups associated with the U.S. government have stolen trillions of dollars to kill people in lands most citizens can't find on a map, partly for profit and partly because they are mentally ill.
Citizens and taxpayers are not even allowed to know the names of all the secret groups that secretly get taxpayer money to do secret things that benefit people who taxpayers are not allowed to know.
U.S. government corruption is a problem for everyone on the planet, not just U.S. citizens.
Do the work of stopping corruption in the U.S. government.
Remember when people were screaming that Bush was the root of all evil? How's that whole Obama thing working out for you.
It wouldn't matter who's the temporary president anyway. President's come and go. All the big businesses and secret gov't agencies are there long before and long afterwards.
Clearly both you and the op are terrorists.
There's the rub, isn't it? As long as you call people terrorists, you can do anything to them.
Blow up buildings? Terrorist.
Free animals from research facilities? Terrorist.
Do a web search about bomb-making? Terrorist.
Say "terrorist" in an airport? Terrorist.
Run a red light? Terrorist.
Post a "subversive" comment on Slashdot? Terrorist.
Read this message? Terrorist!!!
If that doesn't work, try the google cache
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html
December 12, 2012, 10:30 p.m. ET
U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens
By JULIA ANGWIN
Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens--even people suspected of no crime.
Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency--how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored--and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases--flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.
Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.
Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.
But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or membe
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For the next incarnation of the government I vote we model it after something a little less dystopian, like Star Trek.
At this point, I might be OK with strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
I am officially gone from