Sunday, September 8, 2013

Obama: 'Nobody Is Listening to Your Phone Calls'

This mornings Drudge Reports has a link to a story on the Washington Post titled 'Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011.'
The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.
In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
My recollection is that Obama said 'no one is listening to your phone calls w/o a warrant.'

 

Obama: 'Nobody Is Listening to Your Phone Calls'

Back to the Washington Post article...

“The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But then they never say, ‘We turn around and deliberately search for Americans’ records in what we took from the wire.’ That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.” 
... and this was the nub of the criticism — a warrant for each target would no longer be required. That means that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were talking to were terrorists, spies or “foreign powers.”
That is why it is important to require a warrant before searching for Americans’ data, Udall said. “Our founders laid out a roadmap where Americans’ privacy rights are protected before their communications are seized or searched — not after the fact,” he said in a statement to The Post.
I found something else puzzling, towards the end of the article.
Joel said that the change was intended to standardize retention periods across the agencies and that the more generous standard was “already in use” by another agency.
What other agency is listening to phone calls w/o a warrant? 
The article mentions the name of the president only once.
Washington Post

11 comments:

Hagar said...

I don't think they volunteer that much information to him about what is going on in his administration, and he does not ask. t is not what he is interested in.

Trooper York said...

The answer is that Obama is lying as usual.

Just as he lied when he said you would keep your same health insurance when Obamacare passed.

Just as he lied about Benghazi when he blamed it on a video when he knew it was a terrorist action.

Just as he lies when he says he cares about small business and business in general.

Just as he lies when he said he wanted to heal the racial divisiveness in this country when that is his stock in trade just as it is for Al Sharpton.

Just as he lies when he says that bombing Syria is in the interest of the United States when it is just in the interest of radical Muslims that he seems to try to assist in every conflict that comes up in the Middle East.

Obama lies. Now more people will die.

KCFleming said...

If you start from the premise that everything Obama says is a lie, part of a lie, or in service to a lie, then, well, then you don't listen to a word he says, much less try to parse it.

Insty pointed out a Forbes article this morning entitled What Happens When You Can't Believe A Thing The President Says?.

Forbes catches up to Rhhardin circa 2008.

rhhardin said...

I don't need to attract a paying audience.

Forbes follows the crowd.

chickelit said...

@Pogo: I will front page that Forbes article later on unless someone beats me to it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The IRS did a better job suppressing the tea parties than Obama did suppressing the use of chemical weapons by Syria.

Via Insty.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

So how does one know when the president means what he says vs. plans to become a “mind-changer”?

Even after plans become law... LAW! Obama can change it.

Little did we know what he meant by hope and change.

edutcher said...

As El Rushbo noted, everything Barack Obama says has an expiration date.

He just didn't know it would eventually come to be measured in milliseconds.

ricpic said...

True, Obama lies all the time. But so does Boehner. They are both ruling class. Or front men for the ruling class. Makes no difference. The point is that the decision has been made that the future United States will be ruling class and slave class, that's the rest of us. Was the decision made around a table at Goldman Sachs? Probably not. This kind of decision is just arrived at more or less simultaneously at all the ruling class command posts. Something in the air. The zeitgeist of the age if you will. So the lying is constant and from everywhere: MSM, Harvard/Princeton/Yale, Hollywood, those ubiquitous Ad-Council ads. It's interesting that the lying hasn't stopped...yet. It means the ruling class is still afraid of us. It may only be residual fear but it's still there. We'll know it's over when there will be simple straightforward wealth confiscation or relocation without explanations or rationalizations. Not there yet, gang. So go back to your petting parties. Be happy!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

George Bush is listening to my phone calls. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert told me so.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I don't know much about this guy but he sounds like the anti-obama.

I like him. A lot.