according to a 2011 secret court opinion. The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year. In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans. “For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion. The court, which meets in secret, oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law authorizing such surveillance in the United States. It has been criticized by some as a “rubber stamp” for the government, but the opinion makes clear the court does not see itself that way. japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/22/world/nsa-email-collection-violated-law-court/#.UhZcwJJMRS4
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 18:48:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015