One Final Expansion of the Surveillance State as Obama Heads for the Door

by | Jan 16, 2017

One Final Expansion of the Surveillance State as Obama Heads for the Door

by | Jan 16, 2017

President Barack Obama’s administration ending its eight-year rule by expanding the sharing of intercepted communications and data between federal agencies may feel a little bit like a final giant middle finger to the many critics of the massive, secretive surveillance state.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch just signed off on changes that will increase the ability of the National Security Agency (NSA) to share some raw intercepted data with other agencies before the process of filtering out private information from people unconnected to actual targets. The snooping itself is not changing, but more people will have access earlier in the process.

Specifically this is surveillance authorized by Executive Order 12333, the provisions that outline the conduct of intelligence agencies. These are rules separate from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the PATRIOT Act, and the new USA Freedom Act. The 12333 rules are specifically intended to oversee surveillance of foreign targets and foreign countries. It has very little oversight outside of the executive branch.

Because of the intelligence community’s attitude of “collect everything and sort it out later,” the surveillance taking place through 12333 also ends up gathering all sorts of communications and data from domestic sources. What had been happening is that the NSA would filter out anything other agencies shouldn’t be getting access to and then pass the info along. Under the new rules, these other agencies will be able to search through the raw information itself but would still be required to purge unrelated communications.

Read the rest at Reason here.

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

US Bombing of Iran Harms Non-Proliferation

US Bombing of Iran Harms Non-Proliferation

Iran didn’t violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States did. When the U.S. bombed Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities on June 23, they didn’t just violate the cardinal rule of international law by attacking a sovereign nation, without Security...

read more
Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This