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Disputed NSA Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says (nytimes.com)
According to a senior Republican congressional aide, the National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans' domestic calls and texts. "The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader's national security adviser," reports The New York Times. From the report: In a raw assertion of executive power, President George W. Bush's administration started the program as part of its intense pursuit for Qaeda conspirators in the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and a court later secretly blessed it. The intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden disclosed the program's existence in 2013, jolting the public and contributing to growing awareness of how both governments and private companies harvest and exploit personal data. The way that intelligence analysts have gained access to bulk records of Americans' phone calls and texts has evolved, but the purpose has been the same: They analyze social links to hunt for associates of known terrorism suspects.
Congress ended and replaced the program disclosed by Mr. Snowden with the U.S.A. Freedom Act of 2015, which will expire in December. Security and privacy advocates have been gearing up for a legislative battle over whether to extend or revise the program -- and with what changes, if any. Mr. Murry, who is an adviser for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, raised doubts over the weekend about whether that debate will be necessary. His remarks came during a podcast for the national security website Lawfare. Mr. Murry brought up the pending expiration of the Freedom Act, but then disclosed that the Trump administration "hasn't actually been using it for the past six months." "I'm actually not certain that the administration will want to start that back up," Mr. Murry said. He referred to problems that the National Security Agency disclosed last year. "Technical irregularities" had contaminated the agency's database with message logs it had no authority to collect, so officials purged hundreds of millions of call and text records gathered from American telecommunications firms. A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy's office said that Mr. Murry "was not speaking on behalf of administration policy or what Congress intends to do on this issue."
Congress ended and replaced the program disclosed by Mr. Snowden with the U.S.A. Freedom Act of 2015, which will expire in December. Security and privacy advocates have been gearing up for a legislative battle over whether to extend or revise the program -- and with what changes, if any. Mr. Murry, who is an adviser for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, raised doubts over the weekend about whether that debate will be necessary. His remarks came during a podcast for the national security website Lawfare. Mr. Murry brought up the pending expiration of the Freedom Act, but then disclosed that the Trump administration "hasn't actually been using it for the past six months." "I'm actually not certain that the administration will want to start that back up," Mr. Murry said. He referred to problems that the National Security Agency disclosed last year. "Technical irregularities" had contaminated the agency's database with message logs it had no authority to collect, so officials purged hundreds of millions of call and text records gathered from American telecommunications firms. A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy's office said that Mr. Murry "was not speaking on behalf of administration policy or what Congress intends to do on this issue."
Government officials outright denied having such program in the first place, up until Edward Snowden revealed that this stuff was indeed real and in use. How can we trust them to tell the truth now?
Google knows more about all of us than the NSA,
That ONE system isn't being used. They didn't mention the ones that ARE. They don't credibly claim that they've turned off XKEYSCORE and the entire chain. It's a very limited statement designed to say exactly what it says.
It's been superseded by a new, broader, more secretive, more intrusive, more brazenly unconstitutional program.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
They don't need it anymore. They got something better.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really? lawfareblog? Glen Greenwald, not exactly a conservative, has called lawfareblog a tool "serving, venerating and justifying the acts of those in power", in this case the Democrats. It's highly regarded by left wing pundits.
So basically the best you've got is a dossier put together by a British intelligence mercenary for opposition research paid for by the DNC.
The truth is that none of the dossier has been proven true, despite the claims of many left wing media "news" services. Despite the point made that politically motivated "top intelligence officials" pushed it, when Comey was under oath he refused to state the dossier was confirmed. Because it wasn't. What we have here is a bunch of deep state actors who would love for it to be true so that their illegal actions to hamstring the duly elected president of the United States during the period before his inauguration and after could be justified. Former UK ambassador to Russia has stated the dossier is inconsistent with British Intelligence's information. Steele made it up. The DNC paid for it. Bad actors in the intelligence and justice bureaucracy used it to try to illegally overturn the election.