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Obama Changed Rules Regarding Raw Intelligence, Allowing NSA To Share Raw Data With US's Other 16 Intelligence Agencies (schneier.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Schneier on Security: President Obama has changed the rules regarding raw intelligence, allowing the NSA to share raw data with the U.S.'s other 16 intelligence agencies. 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 transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches. The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people. Here are the new procedures. This rule change has been in the works for a while. Here are two blog posts from April discussing the then-proposed changes.
Most open and transparent president ever, just with your data, not his.
I think the more salient point is whether or not terror attacks represent any significant risk at all. Now I'll admit when someone Jihadi drives a truck into a crowd of people, that certainly creates some casualties, and by consequence creates a significant amount of fear. But what are the real odds of any resident of a Western country dying in a terrorist attack. In reality, the odds are infinitesimal. Now dying from a heart attack or stroke, or hell, even choking or highway fatalities, those represent massive killers, with huge numbers of casualties with huge costs for society. And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nowadays, you can't even have a couple of Romanian prostitutes piss on you in a Moscow hotel without people finding out and pretending it's a big deal. Sad!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why must something be done?
We have limited financial resources, if spending those same resources on a different problem will save more lives, doesn't it make sense to put the money where it will do the most good? Fighting terrorism costs a fortune, and has a track record of being extremely ineffectual. There are many more places where many more lives could be saved for a fraction of the cost, and all without giving up all our civil liberties in the process.
The Republicans won't make noise about this because they want it just as much as the Democrats.
You seem to think there's an actual difference between the 2 parties on issues like this, there isn't. Both parties want a full on police state, politics is all about control, nobody in politics wants less control, they all want more.