Brian4Liberty
01-13-2017, 11:43 AM
One Final Expansion of the Surveillance State as Obama Heads for the Door (http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/13/one-final-expansion-of-the-surveillance)
More federal employees will have access to raw intel data gathered without warrants.
Scott Shackford | Jan. 13, 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.
...
The number of people who will potentially have access to this evidence collected without a warrant will increase, and as Wired explains, there will be increased opportunities for law enforcement agencies to use the concept of "parallel construction" to attempt to secretly collected information without having to reveal it to defendants. Under "parallel construction," law enforcement agencies act upon the information they've gotten without warrants but then look for additional evidence they wouldn't have known about without the surveillance information. The "additional" evidence is what gets submitted to the courts, and they keep their mouths shut about the existence of the data or communications they've accessed without court approval. The judge and the defense don't even know about the secret sources, and therefore cannot challenge the constitutionality of the data collection.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been ringing the alarm about the potential misuses of communications collected under 12333 for years, particularly in connection with Edward Snowden's domestic surveillance disclosures. Read about their concerns here.
...
More: https://reason.com/blog/2017/01/13/one-final-expansion-of-the-surveillance
More federal employees will have access to raw intel data gathered without warrants.
Scott Shackford | Jan. 13, 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.
...
The number of people who will potentially have access to this evidence collected without a warrant will increase, and as Wired explains, there will be increased opportunities for law enforcement agencies to use the concept of "parallel construction" to attempt to secretly collected information without having to reveal it to defendants. Under "parallel construction," law enforcement agencies act upon the information they've gotten without warrants but then look for additional evidence they wouldn't have known about without the surveillance information. The "additional" evidence is what gets submitted to the courts, and they keep their mouths shut about the existence of the data or communications they've accessed without court approval. The judge and the defense don't even know about the secret sources, and therefore cannot challenge the constitutionality of the data collection.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been ringing the alarm about the potential misuses of communications collected under 12333 for years, particularly in connection with Edward Snowden's domestic surveillance disclosures. Read about their concerns here.
...
More: https://reason.com/blog/2017/01/13/one-final-expansion-of-the-surveillance