“The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations,” Charlie Savage reports for The New York Times.
“The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies,” Savage reports. “The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners’ phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.”
“Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the N.S.A. collects incidentally — which agency officials have said is hard to measure — and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information,” Savage reports. “‘Before we allow them to spread that information further in the government, we need to have a serious conversation about how to protect Americans’ information,’ said Alexander Abdo, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The U.S. government is so voracious and rapacious for data it makes Google look like a privacy proponent.
The funny thing about this is that everyone was relieved when the Patriot Act Expired, and yet it was merely replaced with a slightly less invasive version called the USA Freedom Act.
Hmmm, seems the gummint called it the “USA Freedom Act” cos they want USA intelligence organisations to have the Freedom to Act any way they want, regardless of the constitution or any laws.
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The US is good at naming vile things so that people think it is something good…..take for example Citizens United, Free Syrian Army, Patriot Act, Freedom Act…..and on and on fooling the people and taking advantage of their apathy. If its got Citizen or Free/Freedom or Patriot in it it must be good…..right?
The stupid Android crowd is fooled by this same type of mind control……well something that is ‘Open’ must be good …right?
See the Affordable Care Act.
Governments are good at naming schemes. People’s Liberation Army comes to mind. As a soldier you take oath to protect the communist regime from the Chinese people and that’s not even a joke.
Gotta love the propagandist bullshit names given to these intrusions into US citizen’s lives, all for the sake of paranoia, neo-con political craziness and the military industrial complex.
“Patriot” Act
“Freedom” Act
Yes, the creators of these abominations really think we’re stupid idiots. It’s predation and disrespect, just like we’ve come to expect from modern biznizziz. Corrupted power.
Does the FBI’s MO fit in this MO?
As I’ve said before, at least Obama lied about protecting our civil liberties when he was campaigning.
Reading through this article about the gathering and dissemination of people’s private information, of course it’s easy to extrapolate it all into the ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ scenario. Eternal war. Crush the citizens who don’t destroy their own souls for the sake of THE PARTY, or whatever is the euphemism of the day. Plain old totalitarianism all over again.
Imagine if people had iPhones during the McCarthy era. And the government had a backdoor.
In September 2016 Apple releases the iPhone 7, and you will see why the future won’t be like “1984”.
Would be so cool if they ran an updated version of that ad with Trump’s face. Or Obama’s.
Or Hillarys