Wednesday, March 29, 2017

"Obama's rule changes opened door for NSA intercepts of Americans to reach political hands"

Via Drudge:  As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama’s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned.

Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Some intercepted communications from November to January involved Trump transition figures or foreign figures' perceptions of the incoming president and his administration. Intercepts involving congressional figures also have been unmasked occasionally for some time.

The NSA is expected to turn over logs as early as this week to congressional committees detailing who consumed reports with unmasked Americans' identities from their intercepts since the summer of 2016.

This information is likely to become a primary focus of the Russia counterintelligence probe of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Circa confirmed the unmasking procedures through interviews with intelligence professionals and by reviewing previously classified documents it obtained that described the loosening of privacy requirements.

To intelligence professionals, the public revelations affirm an undeniable reality.

Over the last decade, the assumption of civil liberty and privacy protections for Americans incidentally intercepted by the NSA overseas has been eroded in the name of national security.

(Link to the rest of the story)

6 comments:

edutcher said...

To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Methadras said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Trooper York said...

I blame Trump.

(Just wanted to say April the trouble)

Trooper York said...

But then that is my solution to everything.

Leland said...

It is really worse than that Nick. It's not that the NSA can capture information to use against our enemies, is that they've figured out how to try and capture all possible information; without considering the analysis capability to review it. It is why we have all these "known wolves" that still prey on their targets. We knew about them, but even though we knew, nothing was done to stop them. The NSA needs to cut back on IT and do more analysis. To do that, first they have to drain the swamp of the politicians in the NSA that have realized the bonanza for Oppo research in their hands.

But yeah, nobody mentions Posse Comitatus anymore.

And what good is any of the information captured if for years after an event; federal investigators still can't figure out the motives of someone that takes time out of a mass murder event to call 9-11 and local news stations to proclaim his support of ISIS.

ndspinelli said...

Leland, Intelligence has fallen in love w/ technology. Nothing beats human intelligence. But, that's difficult and dangerous. The Ivy League girly men can't do Muslim intelligence.