PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the N.S.A. “Scandal”

[Tx4obama]

-snip-

In other words, the NSA doesn’t give a damn about you swapping recipes with your Aunt Edith—or even your decision to email your drug dealer (foolish as that might be.) And the NSA doesn’t get to establish the minimization procedures on its own—those, too, have to be approved by the FISA courts.

In the past, some minimization procedures bordered on the absurd: for example, pre–9/11, the rules said that the name of companies based in the United States could not be used in communications transmitted from the N.S.A. to other intelligence or law-enforcement bodies. So, suppose the N.S.A. learned through signals intel that a known terrorist was flying at noon on June 20 from Frankfurt to New York on Delta flight no. 2012. Any communication could identify the terrorist, locations, date, and time; however, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. couldn’t be told they were flying in on Delta. Based in Atlanta, you see.

As for the purported secrecy of this program—folks haven’t been listening. Section 702 was widely debated and parsed through by the Congress before its adoption in 2008 (under the Bush administration). It was widely debated and parsed through by Congress before its re-authorization in December 2012 (under the Obama administration). Any supposed expert who feigns surprise here is, once again, either uninformed or hyping.

Getting deeper into the weeds: some news reports have said that companies like Google, Facebook, and the like allowed the government to have “direct access” to their servers through the actually-not-a-program “PRISM program.” That’s false.

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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal

A Good Read

[Mojorabbit]

1. If the papers know all about the ins and outs of these programs

I wonder why congress has not been briefed in such detail.

[BenzoDia]

2. When one gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, denial is often the choosen reaction.

[The Magistrate]

3. Very Interesting, Ma'am

Deserves wide circulation.