https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/us/politics/nsa-surveillance-terrorism-privacy.html
The National Security Agency said Friday that it had halted one of the most disputed practices of its warrantless surveillance program, ending a once-secret form of wiretapping that dates to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 expansion of national security powers.
The agency is no longer collecting Americans' emails and texts exchanged with people overseas that simply mention identifying terms — like email addresses — for foreigners whom the agency is spying on, but are neither to nor from those targets.
The decision is a major development in American surveillance policy. Privacy advocates have argued that the practice skirted or overstepped the Fourth Amendment.
The change is unrelated to the surveillance imbroglio over the investigations into Russia and the Trump campaign, according to officials familiar with the matter. Rather, it stemmed from a discovery that N.S.A. analysts had violated rules imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court barring any searching for Americans' information in certain messages captured through such wiretapping.
Though I'm personally wondering why now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday May 01 2017, @04:30PM
"What does William Binney say?" or WDWBS? :)
The US government liars and thus the NYT liars and the rest all tried this back in 2015 (see second blockquote below). No one of merit bought it then so they have to try again, and again no one with a barely functioning brain will buy it if they pay any attention at all.
Here's the recent Washington's Blog entry [washingtonsblog.com] from April 30ieth 2017 (yesterday, relative date), I've added the bold emphasis and removed link clutter:
Visit the link to the post to get additional and clickable links.
I would add that while nothing has changed for the better that fact alone means that it automatically has changed for the worse simply due to technological progress (examples like how public civilian research now manages to copy the entirety of a voice in near real-time needing only a sample of one minute of speech and immense improvements in automated intelligence analysis (Snowden's old job) only come in addition to more mundane things like Moore's Law).
Another nitpick is that Binney says "could" when he ought to say "will". There is no "could" in "automated retrieval of everything" :3
Compare the above to Washington's Blog [washingtonsblog.com] in 2015:
Visit their site for the links and more (including how the content of all your phone calls also goes into the in-box), the above blockquote is just a snippet.
Whatever any US government or anyone under their control (all western governments, all western media, all "opposition", all ideology, all "quarrels", popular culture and entertainment) says or pretends is manipulation. One has to remember that every time one sees anything at all be it about Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, the US itself, anything at all in the "news".
Surveillance is the "IN box", manipulation is the "OUT box".
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))