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NSA Collected Americans' Phone Records Despite Law Change, Says Report (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer. The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people U.S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism. It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year. The report came as Congress faced a decision on whether to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permits the NSA to collect foreign intelligence information on non-U.S. persons outside the United States, and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.
the CIA has been breaking laws for quite some time. It will take a GIANT public stink before the CIA stops blatantly breaking laws in the name of well...whatever it wants to justify it's behavior with at the time. (Now it's "national security" back in the 50-60's it was "fighting communism"). When Kennedy tried to get the CIA on more government reins...well we know what happened to him.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Remember, location is usually implicit for landline calls. Usually.
Do not doubt they perform disambiguation for landline calls where location is not assured to be exact. Mobile phones are not special cases, save that location may change during a call.
And we haven't been told what they collect for text messages. Sure they do.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Because no one ever uses the President's name to refer to the action of an administration?
If every conversation is swept-up in a dragnet, it makes no sense to physically tap a phone connection, you just query the Utah Data Repository under the guise of "National Security" and with the blessing of the FISA court's rubber-stamp warrant.
We do know, with absolute certainty (because she herself admitted it on camera) was that Susan Rice, in her capacity as National Security Advisor, repeatedly and specifically asked for the redaction of Trump campaign workers and known associates during the campaign. Why did she do it, because she needed "context". We are to believe that Susan "A YouTube video caused Benghazi" Rice was conducting her own investigations out of her office, because she doesn't trust the FBI, CIA, etc. to do their jobs...
What I want to know is what did Peter Schiff see in the SCIF that made him stop attacking Repubicans and their "Politically-motivated witch hunt"?
Nothing suspicious there, perfectly normal - every National Security Advisor in recent administrations has been a part-time sleuth.
Ken
But are you seriously arguing that Trump's complete and total inconsistency is just like any other President?
Yes. The man has been in media for sometime and obviously he understands it by running successful media endeavors and a successful presidential campaign against a better funded and more experienced opponent. Obviously, there is method to his madness even if you or CNN don't understand it. His "inconsistency" I think is part of that method and I think many of his ardent supporters rationalize it to "deal making" or some other favorable trait that they admire even if they don't agree with the way it is done or the outcome.
It isn't right or wrong it is just different.
Records -- not content.
Smith v Maryland (1979) holds that phone call records, as "business records" provided to a third party, do not have an expectation of privacy and are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. In order for this to change, Congress needs to act, or SCOTUS will need to speak again on the matter -- the nature of which admittedly has changed in the ensuing 38 years.
Targeted collection of communications *content* of US Persons anywhere in the world requires an individualized warrant.
Additionally, there are over 1 trillion cell phone calls made in the US annually, which means this record collection represents 0.015% of total domestic wireless calls.
This issue and its handling is a lot more complex and nuanced than the contemporaneous articles would lead an observer to believe...
Honestly, I did not foresee the rise of Trump muppets here on SlashDot every day since he got elected, gaslighting and pushing their alt-right bullshit.
That is a error in judgment you made because you assumed they were all just unpaid volunteers, doing it in their free time. They aren't unpaid though. They aren't volunteers. They didn't vote for Trump; they're not even American.