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Obama Administration Set To Expand Sharing of Data That NSA Intercepts (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes: The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages - not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally - which agency officials have said is hard to measure - and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages - not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally - which agency officials have said is hard to measure - and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
I can not even begin to imagine the implications this will have. Let the fishing begin!
The former East German Stasi would be proud.
/s
Thank you President Obama for making govt surveillance of the citizenry the new normal, I'm sure with a history of political characters like McCarthy, Hoover, Nixon etc. that this won't be abused in the future.
Because racism
"His name was James Damore."
From Wiki
1984 is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime."
The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power." The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue in Newspeak), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all documents that have been edited and do not contain the revisions; in this way, no proof exists that the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.
What's the complaint? Didn't he promise to be more transparent? He didn't say with whom
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We had one for a little while, but rather than reform CIFA it was shut down in a hurry.
We need something like CIFA because having the FBI do both general law enforcement and counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism makes it too hard to prevent intelligence products from landing in general law enforcement operations.
The agency doesn't need to be big. In fact, it should be the smallest member of the intelligence community because virtually none of our "domestic threats" are anything more than ordinary hate crimes that belong to the states and FBI. Even most of the hate crimes by Muslims that have been prevented aren't strictly speaking relevant because they're just people trying to act on ISIS propaganda, not a real nexus to ISIS. That too is the domain of the FBI.
You know what would be the domain of a domestic intel agency would be the Saudi and Qatari funding of extremist mosques on our soil. Or Russian espionage. Things that actually have a nexus between domestic and foreign, so there would be a domestic agency that could work hand in hand with the CIA and NSA to hunt down the domestic side of international threats without involving ordinary law enforcement.
Wow and he's a Democrat? Scary
Bit like the Labour government we had here with Tony Blair, socialist morals led to the most authoritarian government in the UK since the war.
Socialism doesn't understand privacy or rights of the individual, you keep hearing about "the greater good".......
Being Mutual - Working together for a better society
There IS a movement to impeach Obama on exactly those grounds... except that is not the priority reason OR the main reason.
Nor is there anything to that spying on people wrong - it's Obama who is abusing the Patriot Act, not the Patriot Act that is abusive.
But they do manage to make brown babies one of the reasons... no... Make that the only reason everyone actually agrees on.
Hmm... Maybe you're right.
Maybe racism IS the main motivator for why there IS a petition to impeach Obama.
http://www.teaparty.org/impeac...
TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE U.S. CONGRESS:
Let it be known that I stand with the Tea Party and demand that impeachment proceedings be brought against President Barack Obama for high crimes and misdemeanors, including, but not limited to the following:
1. Failing to protect American citizens in the Libyan embassy in Benghazi and purposefully allowing them to be tortured and murdered in cold blood. Cries for help were ignored. Pleas for ground support were brushed off. While American ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues were being slaughtered at the hands of murderers, Obama turned a blind eye and went to bed, blaming a YouTube video for the attack.
While âoejustice will be servedâ has resonated from his lips, nothing has been done to bring justice for this crime. Instead, it has been swept under the carpet. Now the Obama State Department is compounding the crimes against our diplomats and military by intimidating government civilian and military personnel into not testifying.
2. Blatant abuse and misuse of the true intention of the PATRIOT Act. Obama and is administration deem it acceptable to invade the privacy of U.S. citizens by reading our e-mail, tracking our Internet visits, comparing notes with the IRS about our taxes and âoeminingâ our every purchase. These are egregious violations of our right to privacy.
3. Outright brutal assaults on the First Amendment by the Obama Justice Department. Those who are held accountable to the highest extend of the law chose to break the law by illegally wiretapping phone lines and cell phone conversations and invading email accountsâ"spyingâ"on members of the press and accusing reporters doing their job of being criminals.
4. Under Obamaâ(TM)s ruling hand, the Internal Revenue Service purposefully, knowingly and willingly targeted conservatives and Tea Party members, delaying their non-profit status and then lying to Congress about their activities.
5. Repeatedly hiding illegal Federal activities, such as the Justice Departmentâ(TM)s âoeFast and Furiousâ program where guns were handed to KNOWN criminals and members of Mexican drug cartels then used to kill our own border agents. Obama acolytes still continue to lie to Congress and the citizens of the United States about the gun-running operation.
6. For purposefully, willfully and wrongfully putting a bounty on the heads of 22 Navy Seals aboard a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan. Obama knowingly sent those Seals to their deaths that fateful day then had his military brass issue orders to cremate the bodies for no reason. Despite the outright lies told to the American people, those men did not all die aboard that helicopter that day. Eight Navy Seals jumped out alive and fought for their lives. Again, no backup reinforcementsâ"only a team of Afghans that were waiting to ambush them. Despite false promises of âoejusticeâ by the president, nothing has been done.
7. For constant violations of the regulatory and law-making processâ"end running Congress with Executive Orders after theyâ(TM)ve voted down bills and making appointments while the Senate was in session, effectively violating the Constitution of the United States of America.
8. Allowing criminals to go unchecked a
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The elites in this country are quick to frame everything in terms of "left" and "right", "Liberal" versus "Conservative", and so on.
I've come to the realization that this is a false distinction, made to distract people from the issues and give the illusion of choice.
The real choice is populist (in the interests of the people) and non-populist (to the interests of anyone else).
Both Liberals and Conservatives in this country are on the non-populist end of that spectrum. All bad government actions have bipartisan support, whether it's H1B visa programs taking away our jobs, Patriot act(s) taking away our rights, our 3rd world health care, draconian IP laws passed by secret treaty, killing citizens without trial, secret laws, secret lists... it goes on and on.
What good does it do to argue that D's are better than R's when neither side will present a unified front on our behalf?
Take up the cause and tell us how such-and-so was Bush's fault. Someone will point out that the Democrats controlled congress during that time. Someone else will point out that the bill's opposition was mostly Democratic.
Therefore we should vote for the D's - they're always on the correct side of a losing battle.
One way out is to always vote against the incumbent. If enough people do this and the pols realize that a non-populist term will be their only term, we'll eventually see change.
This election presents a rare choice of two populist candidates: Bernie and Donald. It's apparent that neither is traditionally "left" or "right", so if one of them wins we might get some actual change.
Pay no attention to the name callers you see in the media, or even on Slashdot - that's just the elites trying to sway your vote by emotional means.
Look at their policies, and ask the question: if this policy were implemented, would the *people* benefit?
If the answer is "yes", then that's the candidate we need.
You may have missed Rockoon's point.
As he is replying to "why isn't there interest in impeaching Obama?" with "Because Racism", logically he is saying that racism protects Obama.
Few people denounce the racism of minorities versus other minorities or versus the majority because they do not want to be called racist for "picking" on a minority. Thus racism protects Obama in some ways.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I'm loving me some more of that "Hope and Change"....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You know this survalience hasn't really poanned out in regards to stopping "terrorism", look at France, San Berndino.
So I am left scratching my head exactly what use is this data?
I mean it's really only useful to spy on your population this way if you believe them to be the threat.
But why would a nation force fed illegal immigration, the shipping of jobs overseas, the repeated financial thefts by large banks who were then bailed out, illegal wars, and a massive growing security apparatus costing billions being built next to crumbling public infrastructure be a threat?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
CHANGE prior administrations' policies very little
HOPE you don't get indefinitely detained
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It seems more and more like what he really said was "Rope and Chains" given the crap we've been shackled with.
I really hope both Sanders and Trump get their party's nominations just to shake things up a bit.
Uh, "Socialism doesn't understand privacy or rights of the individual". I think there is a very basic misunderstanding of what socialism is. Which is a system of economic priorities. China is even more capitalist than the USA (if you look at the actual culture and not the labels...might find a visit interesting..). And we all know how much the Chinese Party values the rights of the individual (or even the community). The USA hasn't really valued the rights of the individual since the "so called" Patriot Act was put into law (and renewed/strengthened several times since). Are we as a "capitalist" society (we aren't pure capitalist FYI, we bailed out Ford didn't we?) with our spying (without warrant or cause), imprisoning without due process under the guise of national security, rendition and basically declaring ourselves in a state of war (without actually legally declaring war against anyone in particular, or is that everyone?), respecting rights of the individual? France and Germany respect privacy rights far more. Perhaps more "socialism" would help bring more respect of privacy in the USA. "Capitalism" certainly isn't doing much of a job here. As I said before, neither economic approach has any real bearing on how rights of privacy being respected.Canada is consider in many way more socialist (although under Harper that was scary), and we still (to a lessor degree than we used to) respect privacy rights (as far as we know) more than in the USA. for now. Anyway, just something to think about.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I can imagine some consequences, the biggest of which is that there'll be more leaks -- of the Bradley Manning type of the Edward Snowden type, as well as leaks to friendly and not-so-friendly intelligence services.
Which doesn't mean it's not a good idea. Or that if it's a good idea it can't be a bad idea at the same time. Every tough decision has both desirable and undesirable consequences, the problem is that people aren't comfortable with that. In fact they shouldn't be. But they like to wrap themselves in a comforting blanket of confirmation bias so they act as if ideas are either entirely bad with no good consequences or entirely good with no bad ones.
I don't fetishize the US Constitution; a lot of it (like the electoral college) is pretty half-assed. It's not surprising, because they didn't have a lot of models of a formal republican constitution to build upon. But the one thing about it that's really brilliant about the US Constitution is the notion of checks and balances. The powers you give the government are always dangerous, so you encumber their use by harnessing the natural instinct of institutions to guard their prerogatives. That's genius.
I agree to stipulate this can be used for important and legitimate purposes, obviously it can. But if the government wants to do this I want to hear about the checks and balances.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't fetishize the US Constitution; a lot of it (like the electoral college) is pretty half-assed. It's not surprising, because they didn't have a lot of models of a formal republican constitution to build upon. But the one thing about it that's really brilliant about the US Constitution is the notion of checks and balances. The powers you give the government are always dangerous, so you encumber their use by harnessing the natural instinct of institutions to guard their prerogatives. That's genius.
No, it's one of those things that sounds good in theory, but doesn't actually work out in practice. All the other western governments do not have a government like ours, they have Parliamentary systems where the executive is chosen by the Parliament (legislature). It's a much more efficient system, and prevents the deadlocks we have in this country from time to time because Congress and the President are at odds, because the People are incompetent at voting coherently. Does this lead to far more abuses in those nations? Apparently not, because they don't seem to have any more problems with government spying and corruption than we do, and in many cases, they have far less. Not to say they're perfect, but places like Norway are not exactly a bunch of backwards countries or totalitarian hellholes.
And yes, lots of other stuff in the Constitution is just a mess, especially the Electoral College bit. Face it, the document is archaic and needs to be replaced with something newer. It was a good try in the late 1700s when there weren't many other non-monarchy republics around, but other countries have had several centuries now to try out other stuff and they've found some better ways.