There are 2 sides to every coin; this was posted by a combat vet friend or mine who works for Govt Intel. Facts about NSA Surveillance: 1. It isn’t wiretapping. The order authorizes the transfer of “telephony metadata” such as the date and length of each call and which phone numbers were involved. It doesn’t include the content of calls—which is more tightly protected by the Fourth Amendment—or the identity of the callers. The targeted data are mathematical, not verbal. They’re the kind of information you’d request if you were mapping possible extensions of a terrorist or criminal network. 2. It’s judicially supervised. The leaked document is a court order. It was issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance [FISA] Court. To get the Verizon data, the FBI had to ask the court for permission. The Bush administration used to extract this kind of metadata unilaterally. The Obama administration has changed the rules to bring in the court as an overseer. 3. It’s congressionally supervised. Any senator who’s expressing shock about the program is a liar or a fool. The Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have been briefed on it many times. Committee members have had access to the relevant FISA court orders and opinions. The intelligence committee has also informed all senators in writing about the program, twice, with invitations to review classified documents about it prior to reauthorization. If they didn’t know about it, they weren’t paying attention. 4. It expires quickly unless it’s reauthorized. The leaked order was issued on April 25 and expires on July 19. That’s the way these orders have worked for years: The court has to review and reapprove the surveillance request, or the authority to transfer the records expires. 5. Wiretaps would require further court orders. The reason the leaked order is so broad is that it applies only to metadata. If, after looking at its map of phone numbers, the government decides that yours might belong to a potential terrorist, it can seek further information, including the content of your calls. But in that case, it has to ask the court for a separate order, which in turn would require enough evidence to override your Fourth Amendment rights.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:32:23 +0000
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