If you thought government surveillance was bad already, it just got worse. A lot worse.
[T]he Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security.
The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that gives the NSA virtually unlimited authority to intercept communications abroad. Previously, NSA analysts would filter out information they deemed irrelevant and mask the names of innocent Americans before passing it along.
[...] Executive Order 12333, often referred to as "twelve triple-three," has attracted less debate than congressional wiretapping laws, but serves as authorization for the NSA's most massive surveillance programs — far more than the NSA's other programs combined. Under 12333, the NSA taps phone and internet backbones throughout the world, records the phone calls of entire countries, vacuums up traffic from Google and Yahoo's data centers overseas, and more.
In 2014, The Intercept revealed that the NSA uses 12333 as a legal basis for an internal NSA search engine that spans more than 850 billion phone and internet records and contains the unfiltered private information of millions of Americans.
[...] But this massive database inevitably includes vast amount of American's communications — swept up when they speak to people abroad, when they go abroad themselves, or even if their domestic communications are simply routed abroad. That's why access was previously limited to data that had already been screened to remove unrelated information and information identifying U.S. persons. The new rules still ostensibly limit access to authorized foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes — not ordinary law enforcement purposes — and require screening before they are more widely shared. But privacy activists are skeptical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @06:36PM
I honestly did not think I would see a president more petty and vindictive than G. W. Bush in my lifetime. I guess I was wrong.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @07:35PM
Calm down, he's not the President yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:13PM
yeah, I wanted to see if this comment was specific about the president that is presently president, or the one that isn't president yet, since the comment wouldn't apply to the future when referencing such past events.
but if that is confusing I am sure I am confused too. Still, I think our future president won't disappoint and will be correct in context when this is read again in a few days.