A few words from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on White House domestic surveillance “reform.” (In a number of ways here, "less is more.")
After all that White House propaganda about domestic surveillance “reform” over the past 18+ months, a simple tweet, less than 24 hours ago, from Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) (the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) tells readers far more than too many here reading this would ever acknowledge to be the inconvenient truth about this subject. Still.
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Senator Wyden, who's obviously aware that this entire matter is just another public exercise in futility, refers those reading his tweet to this article, from The Guardian, nine months ago...
NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails – Clapper
• NSA used 'back door' to search Americans' communications
• Director of national intelligence confirms use of new legal rule
NSA used 'back door' to search Americans' communications
• Data collected under 'Prism' and 'Upstream' programs
Spencer Ackerman in Washington and James Ball in New York
The Guardian
Tuesday 1 April 2014 16.17 EDT
US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.
The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.
Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.
“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.
“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”
The legal authority to perform the searches, revealed in top-secret NSA documents provided to the Guardian by Edward Snowden, was denounced by Wyden as a “backdoor search loophole.”
Many of the NSA's most controversial programs collect information under the law affected by the so-called loophole. These include Prism, which allows the agency to collect data from Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and other tech companies, and the agency's Upstream program – a huge network of internet cable taps….
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Since Fall 2013, it's been a matter of public record that the White House, in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, continues to co-fund and co-manage the most secretive—it’s so secret, it’s not even referenced in The Guardian article, excerpted above; and, even the name of it may not be mentioned in public by our nation’s Department of Justice, 17 intelligence services and virtually every law enforcement organization in this country, to this day—and, arguably the most expansive domestic surveillance program of all. Still.
On far too many issues, from federal support of our country's constitutional rights to a free press, to implementing a sane regulatory environment that'll put a saddle on a still-unbridled Wall Street, to foreign trade policies that don't undermine national sovereign rights (and too many other matters, in-between), our government continues to provide the public with a whole new definition of the word: propaganda “reform.”
But, please, don’t take my word for this travesty. Just re-read Senator Wyden’s tweet, at the top of this post.
Meanwhile, as The Guardian noted on Wednesday, President Obama continues on with a straight face in his attempts to sell meaningless domestic and international surveillance "reforms," both on Capitol Hill and on the world stage.
Please contact your elected representatives on Capitol Hill and tell them you're fed-up with this pathetic dog and pony show!
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