Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Watching our freedoms die

Wyden, Udall vindicated: Loophole allows for warrantless searches of phone and email records

Senators Ron Wyden, Dianne Feinstein, and Pat Roberts in an Intelligence Committee meeting.
The Senate Intelligence Committee at work
Another top-secret document release from the Snowden cache reveals a loophole that allows for warrantless searches for U.S. citizens' emails and phone calls.

The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian the NSA's authorities provide loopholes that allow "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans". 

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.[...]
The foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court issues approvals annually authorizing such operations, with specific rules on who can be targeted and what measures must be taken to minimize any details "inadvertently" collected on US persons

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