Surprise! The NSA Is Still Spying On You

[Purveyor]

At midnight on Saturday, the National Security Agency ended one of its most notorious spying programs. This is only a tiny victory. The NSA’s sprawling, inefficient surveillance apparatus is still a privacy threat.

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The USA Freedom Act didn’t make sweeping reforms. It nipped one program and left most others intact. The NSA stopped this particular program at the last possible moment because it would’ve broken the law by keeping it running a second longer—and it stopped knowing that it had plenty of other options for warrantless spying.
PRISM is still around, and it’s not alone

Remember PRISM? The clandestine internet-spying program where the NSA bulk collected internet communications from companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook? The one even a Republican Congressman who championed the Patriot Act called “more than the Patriot Act allows?”

PRISM gives the NSA access to a vast amount of data, from records of Skype calls and Gchat logs to unflattering unposted selfies. The only filter the agency uses to make sure it isn’t illegally spying on people within the US is asking an analyst if they’re 51 percent confident that the surveilled person is outside the US.

Last night, the Washington Post and Guardian dropped concurrent bombshell reports. Their subject…
Read more

PRISM was never shut down. Somewhere in America a bunch of NSA analysts are PRISMing like Edward Snowden was a fever-dream twinkle in their spyin’ eyes.

PRISM’s not our only problem. The NSA shut down a bulk email metadata program called Stellarwind in late 2011, years after Bush Administration officials fought about its legality. But instead of not analyzing large amounts of domestic data, the NSA looked for alternate routes to it. Documents obtained by the New York Times earlier this month show that the NSA found other ways to continue to obtain and analyze domestic personal data even after it stopped Stellarwind.

more...

http://gizmodo.com/surprise-the-nsa-is-still-spying-on-you-1745256761

[friendly_iconoclast]

1. IMO, a commenter at Gizmodo nailed it perfectly:

My assumption is that any spy agency continues to do whatever they want regardless of what their PR department tells the public. I mean, sure, they may stop being blatant about shirking the laws and they may stop most of the unlawful activity, but all of it? Ha. No.

It seems like it’d be stupid not to think this.

[cantbeserious]

2. Surprise - Surprise - Proof Again That The US Government Cannot Be Trusted

eom

[bl968]

3. It's been tried before.

It was nipped before. It started out as John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, Congress canceled the funding for it, so the government simply renamed it and kept running it. That is quite likely exactly what they are doing this time. It's like the hydra it will not go away.

[djean111]

4. Anyone who is surprised is a damned fool. n/t

[marble falls]

5. What you said. How can we possibly trust them when the were specifically set up to circumvent laws?