If you discuss what you learned in a
“secret briefing” are you a traitor? If you don't reveal as much
as Snowdon did, are you a mini-traitor or just not very well
informed? On the other hand, if you simply repeat what you have been
told you may be an ignorant dupe.
Declan McCullagh reports:
The National
Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it
does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold
Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a
secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the
contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an
analyst deciding that.”
If the NSA wants
“to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient,
without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he
learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and
congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Read more on CNET.
I’m glad Declan is reporting on this
as I was surprised when Rep. Nadler brought out an apparent
contradiction between what members of Congress heard in classified
briefings and what Director Mueller testified to. Here’s a clip of
the interaction:
But how much does the government
actually get? A document obtained by Reuters suggests that the
government does not get details on many numbers in the course of a
year:
The U.S.
government only searched for detailed information on calls involving
fewer than 300 specific phone numbers among the millions of raw phone
records collected by the National Security Agency in 2012, according
to a government paper obtained by Reuters on Saturday.
The unclassified
paper was circulated Saturday within the government by U.S.
intelligence agencies and apparently is an attempt by spy agencies
and the Obama administration to rebut accusations that it overreached
in investigating potential militant plots.
Read more on Reuters.
(Related)
If you read only one article today,
read Barton Gellman’s article in the Washington Post, “U.S.
surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet,
phone metadata.”
As I read it, I found myself wondering,
“How many members of Congress really knew/know about these programs
– and of them, how many understood the programs?”
Did Congress totally abrogate its
responsibility to us or did the Executive branch subvert our systems
of checks and balances by misleading or flat-out lying to Congress?
In recent weeks, there have been calls
for a Church-style commission. Sooner would be better than later.
Interesting. I wonder if anyone in
Congress has read it recently?
NSA
surveillance puts George Orwell's '1984' on bestseller lists
[If not, I can
recommend this site:
Brave New World by
Aldous Huxley: eText
– Free
Radio Dramatization (by Huxley himself) – Free
Audio Book by Audible
Does anyone still print? I guess some
teachers still want things on paper...
… Now, Google has released a free
Android app for Cloud Print that enables you to print from any
Android device with a Cloud
Print connected printer.
… For the best expereince, Google
recommends you have a Cloud
Print ready printer. If not, Google Chrome has a setting that
enables you to activate the Google Cloud Print connector. It’s a
simple matter of signing in with your preferred Google account.
Google’s support page shows you how to connect
your classic printer with Google Cloud Print.
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