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NSA Halts Collection of Americans' Emails About Foreign Targets (nytimes.com)
The NSA is stopping one of the most disputed forms of its warrantless surveillance program (alternative source), one in which it collects Americans' emails and texts to and from people overseas and that mention a foreigner under surveillance, NYTimes reports on Friday citing officials familiar with the matter. From the report: National security officials have argued that such surveillance is lawful and helpful in identifying people who might have links to terrorism, espionage or otherwise are targeted for intelligence-gathering. The fact that the sender of such a message would know an email address or phone number associated with a surveillance target is grounds for suspicion, these officials argued. [...] The N.S.A. made the change to resolve problems it was having complying with special rules imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 to protect Americans' privacy. For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials said.
...only to replace it with three programs that are five times worse.
And considering that they were copying this shit for YEARS before they were "found out", what's the likelihood that they're "really" going to stop?
Doing what Obama couldn't (or wouldn't)
I believe them 100% because they've never lied to the public before. Or the courts. Or Congress. Why wouldn't you take them at their word?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
At least Obama got this one right, right? Wait, what?
There is really no valid reason to remove this aspect of surveillance of foreign targets. If you communicate with a foreign power under NSA surveillance, that information should be collected if only to be later discarded.
LIARS LIARS :)
'nuff said
Why should the NSA collect a second copy?
The copy they collected from all American's email should be sufficient.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Also, they are reuniting the koreas, forge peace between palestine and israel and solve the climate chance (pre-trump edition) problem...
Have gnu, will travel.
We don't believe you
Had this been something bad, the headline would have started "Trump's NSA..."
Laws and policies will not stop erosion of privacy by government or big business. Why? Because they really aren't accountable to anyone, and whistle-blowers get into severe trouble.
If something CAN be done, then it is likely it WILL be done... especially if it one or more of these:
* Cheap
* Easy
* Important to them
* Has precedence
* Already being collected
It is like a microphone in a device- The way to ensure privacy isn't to list all kinds of rules and laws and disclosures, it is to put a hard switch on it so the user has the option to turn it off.
Freedom and privacy shouldn't be exclusively to trying to limit what we DO with the information once it is collected. The only real way to ensure you are not being tracked is to prevent the collection of information in the first place. The only sure way to know a license plate scanner isn't being used improperly is to not use them, or limit the scope of how they are used. The only way to know cameras aren't tracking you is to not have cameras everywhere. The only way to know people can't potentionally abuse your messaging is to have encryption that can't be broken and without back-doors.
I am certain this is only because it exempts them from having to programatically exclude Trump and his deplorables, giving them plausible deniability when the eventual investigation asks what they knew when.
...if you have a government service that has so much eroded public support and trust to the point that no one believes anything they say about their own policies (even the potus)....then it might be time to restructure or close shop and start from scratch. There is some poison in that establishment that is going to take a wrecking ball to correct I think....
If it was so valuable to them, why was it hard to come up with some form of metric to prove its worth?
The NSA is "stopping" one of the most disputed forms of its warrantless surveillance program ...
National security officials have argued that such surveillance is "lawful" and "helpful" in identifying people who might have links to "terrorism", espionage or otherwise are targeted for "intelligence-gathering". The fat that the sender of such a message would know an email address or phone umber associated with a surveillance target is grounds for "suspicion", these officials argued. [...] The N.S.A. made the "change" to "resolve" problems it was having "complying" with special rules imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2011 to protect Americans' privacy. For "technical reasons", the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a "byproduct" of such surveillance, the officials said.
Hope that clarifies matters.
"We used to, but we don't anymore." - I actually had an NSA employee say that to my face in 1980 - how many more times have I heard it in the media since? This is just another one ...cm
Really. If we stop collecting this important data, WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
A: Our disks are full and we can't be bothered, besides you have nothing new to say.
B: Too busy cleaning up what we have on current officials to collect anymore.
and the alternative reading....which seems more likely....
We will be collecting emails that meet ANY of those criteria instead of ALL those criteria.
Intelligence agencies will continue do their job and like any big bucks occupation, treat it like an enterprising business, this business being collecting as much data as possible. Now I wonder who else does this...Facebook? Google? Microsoft? Remember, anything and everything you do on a network, neutral or not, contributes towards your digital fingerprint. This fingerprint, along with AI and cloud computing, will destroy any privacy you have and make encryption useless. The reason the NSA or any agency you can pull out of a hat will be quieting operations is because they don't need to anymore; your ISP can just sell your browsing history to them and at a much cheaper rate than it would cost to pay employees and be 100% legal and no warrants needed.
It's not even as dissipated as that. You have to read carefully.
The National Security Agency is instituting several changes in the way it collects information under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In other words, these activities may continue under a different section of the FISA or under another entirely different law (or executive order). However, they will no longer be gathering this information under section 702.
This is like his tax cut plan- his refusal to release his own tax returns while pushing for tax "reforms" strongly indicates that the cuts are designed to lower his own taxes.
Trump obviously doesn't care about an American's emails being read unless the American is him or one of his employees. While I may like the result in this case, I seriously doubt he'd be implementing this policy if it didn't benefit himself.
They left out the final phrase in that sentence:
"...and we will again!"