The US government’s privacy board has sharply rebuked President Barack Obama over the National Security Agency’s mass collection of American phone data, saying the program defended by Obama last week was illegal and ought to be shut down.The PCLOB's entire report. The dissent is interesting, for it is a tissue of either willful blindness or lies. The NSA is, contrary to the dissent's claim, tracking cell phone locations.
A divided Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent and long-troubled liberties advocate in the executive branch, issued a report on Thursday that concludes the NSA’s collection of every US phone record on a daily basis violates the legal restrictions of the statute cited to authorize it, section 215 of the Patriot Act.
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Not only did the board conclude that the bulk surveillance was a threat to constitutional liberties, it could not find “a single instance” in which the program “made a concrete difference in the outcome of a terrorism investigation”.
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The board tacitly rejected the NSA’s public claim that the bulk phone records collection may have made the difference in stopping a terrorist plot connected to cab drivers in San Diego – a rare case in which a government review body has specifically refuted the NSA’s aggressive post-Snowden PR campaign.
“We believe that in only one instance over the past seven years has the program arguably contributed to the identification of an unknown terrorism suspect. Even in that case, the suspect was not involved in planning a terrorist attack and there is reason to believe that the FBI may have discovered him without the contribution of the NSA’s program,” it found.
We have only the NSA's assurances that they are limiting their collection of cell phone data to foreigners.*
And we well know by now, from the NSA's statements since the beginning of the Snowden Releases months ago, that everything that is uttered by any NSA spokesman, official or one of their pet politicians is a lie, including the words "and", "the" and all punctuation.
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* The DEA does, something which the PCLOB seems to have ignored.
I'm afraid that the expiration date for NSA candor is measured in minutes.
ReplyDeleteI have come to doubt that the primary target of this massive data dragnet IS terrorists; at least, foreign ones. Rather, I suspect that WE, the lower 90% of the US, are the target. Historically, this kind of disparity of wealth rebalances itself one way - with guillotines in the public square. The NSA is, indirectly, working for the 5% / 1% / 0.1%, looking for the first credible move against them. Do not expect any serious move to rein them in, either. If Obama and key congress members aren't regularly handed interceptions of phone conversations / sms messages / emails retrieved from this massive drift net, containing threats to him or his family, by way of PROVING how crucial these programs are, I'd be amazed.
ReplyDeleteS.R., there was a time in my life when I would have dismissed what you wrote as paranoid nonsense.
ReplyDeleteNo longer.
Presumably, those who would seriously discuss such tings would take some steps to try and thwart the NSA's dragnet.