This is why we need to make sure Senator Mark Udall (D. CO) is re-elected to the U.S. Senate next year:
http://www.trentonian.com/...
National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander acknowledged Tuesday that the agency’s fact sheet about its spying program on foreigners could have been “more precisely described” a day after Sen. Mark Udall accused him of being misleading.
NSA’s two-page fact sheet about the 702 program, which gives the agency permission to collect foreigners’ phone and e-mail records, had been circulated to members of Congress and posted on its website.
Udall and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon sent Alexander a letter Monday, obtained by The Denver Post, accusing the agency of “significant” errors in the fact sheet that portrayed Americans’ privacy rights as stronger than they actually are.
The NSA took down the fact sheets from its website Tuesday. - The Trentonian, 6/27/13
Udall & Wyden sent a letter to Alexander on Monday asking him to make revisions to a set of fact sheets that were released by the NSA regarding concerns about domestic surveillance that were leaked by Edward Snowden earlier this month:
http://rt.com/...
According to Sens. Wyden and Udall, the NSA’s response isn’t in-tune with what they’ve been told of the programs. "We were disappointed to see that this fact sheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the Section 702 authority has been interpreted by the US government," they write Gen. Alexander. "In our judgment this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans' privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are."
But while the fact sheets have been made available online, Wyden and Udall can’t explain in their public letter what their allegations are in reference to since the lawmakers’ own knowledge of the clandestine operations are not allowed to be discussed, even among the constituents who elected them to the Senate. Instead, they wrote that they’ve “identified this inaccurate statement in the classified attachment” sent to Alexander.
Elsewhere, the lawmakers rejected the NSA’s claim that, "Any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime."
"We believe that this statement is somewhat misleading,” replied the senators, “in that it implies that the NSA has the ability to determine how many American communications it has collected under Section 702, or that the law does not allow the NSA to deliberately search for the records of particular Americans. In fact, the intelligence community has told us repeatedly that it is ‘not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority’ of the FISA Amendments Act.” - RT, 6/25/13
Here's what the NSA fact sheets stated that caught Udall and Wyden's attention:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Many, if not most, of the items on the NSA factsheet list privacy protections for Americans' internet communications, as section 702 – the stated legal basis for the internet-based surveillance program PRISM – is supposed to concern surveillance on non-Americans outside the United States.
"This authority allows only the targeting, for foreign intelligence purposes, of communications of foreign persons who are located abroad," the factsheet reads. "The government may not target any US person anywhere in the world under this authority, nor may it target a person outside of the US if the purpose is to acquire information from a particular, known person inside the US."
It continues: "Any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose or evidence of a crime." Targeting is "immediately terminated," the NSA states, if a foreigner enters the US or the NSA comes to believe it had mistaken a foreigner for an American – unless "that information meets specific, limited criteria approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court", which the factsheet does not detail.
Wyden and Udall singled out that section of the factsheet for a slightly different criticism. They told Alexander they consider it "somewhat misleading", as it implies that the NSA "has the ability to determine how many American communications it has collected under section 702, or that the law does not allow the NSA to deliberately search for the records of particular Americans".
"In fact," the senators continued, "the US intelligence community has told us repeatedly that it is 'not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located inside the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority' of the Fisa Amendments Act." - The Guardian, 6/24/13
Udall and Wyden's letter caused the NSA to take down their fact sheets but they arena's stopping there:
http://www.techspot.com/...
Wyden and Udall are pushing for legislation that would disclose more information about government surveillance and how collected data is interpreted, and add restrictions to surveillance on Americans' phone records. Both senators have for years warned about broad government surveillance that overreaches the letter of the law.
"We believe the US government should have broad authorities to investigate terrorism and espionage, and that it is possible to aggressively pursue terrorists without compromising the constitutional rights of ordinary Americans," Wyden and Udall wrote to Alexander. - Tech Spot, 6/26/13
Here's a little info about the legislation Udall and Wyden are pushing:
http://www.prwatch.org/...
Sens. Udall's and Wyden's bill, the Nexus to Terrorism Act (S. 1182), would limit the federal government's ability to collect that data on Americans "without a demonstrated link to terrorism or espionage," according to a statement released by the Senators' offices.
Sen. Udall, who like Sen. Wyden is a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a joint statement, "The NSA's collection of millions of Americans' phone call records is the type of overreach I have warned about for years. Although I strongly believe some authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [(FISA)] provide valuable information that helps protect our national security, Americans with no link to terrorism or espionage should not have to worry that their private information is being swept up." Sen. Wyden said, "The disclosures of the last week [sic] have made clear to the American people that the law is being interpreted in a way that damages their civil liberties and that the system has been set up to keep Americans unaware of the intrusion."
The bill, the "Nexus to Terrorism Act," would limit the federal government's authority to collect Americans' data without establishing a link to terrorism or espionage, "ensur[ing] that the federal government can protect national security as well as the privacy rights of millions of Americans," according to a statement released upon the bill's introduction. The language of the bill is quite similar to that of legislation that passed the Senate unanimously in 2005.
"The recent disclosures of government surveillance activities have highlighted the gap between the government's interpretation of the PATRIOT Act and the public's understanding," Wyden said. "This gap has allowed the government to create secret programs that violate the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans who have absolutely no ties to terrorism or espionage. This bill will make abundantly clear that the personal information of ordinary Americans without connection to terrorism or espionage must be protected from invasive surveillance by their own government." - PR Watch, 6/24/13
The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mark Begich (D-AK), Tom Udall (D-NM), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). If you would like more information about the Nexus to Terrorism Act, please contact Senators Udall and Wyden for more details:
Udall: (202) 224-5941
Wyden: (202) 224-5244
And if you would like to donate to Udall's 2014 re-election bid, you can do so here:
https://secure.actblue.com/...