{"id":16988,"date":"2017-06-14T19:59:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T23:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=16988"},"modified":"2017-09-14T17:55:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:55:23","slug":"nsa-reneges-on-promise-to-tell-congress-how-many-innocent-americans-it-spies-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2017\/06\/14\/nsa-reneges-on-promise-to-tell-congress-how-many-innocent-americans-it-spies-on\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Reneges on Promise to Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans it Spies On"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lawmakers should know how the laws they pass impact their constituents. That\u2019s especially true when the law would reauthorize a vast Internet and telephone spying program that collects information about millions of law-abiding Americans.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly what the Intelligence Community wants Congress to do when it considers reauthorizing a sweeping electronic surveillance authority under the expiring Section 702, as enacted by the FISA Amendments Act, before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Intelligence officials have been promising Congress they would provide lawmakers with an estimate of the number of American communications that are collected under Section 702. That estimate is a critical piece of information for lawmakers to have as they consider whether and how to reauthorize and reform the warrantless Internet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans in the coming months.<\/p>\n

But during\u00a0a hearing on Section 702<\/a>\u00a0in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, despite previous assurances, said he won\u2019t be providing that estimate out of national security and, ironically, privacy concerns.<\/p>\n

He told lawmakers it is \u201cinfeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. person\u2019s communications may be incidentally collected under Section 702.\u201d To do so would require diverting NSA analysts\u2019 attention away from their current work to \u201cconduct additional significant research\u201d to determine whether the communications collected under Section 702 are American. \u201cI would be asking trained NSA analysts to conduct intense identity verification research on potential U.S. persons who are not targets of an investigation,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom a privacy and civil liberties perspective, I find this unpalatable.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a privacy and civil liberties perspective, we find it unpalatable that the Intelligence Community would ask Congress to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program without first following through on the promise\u2014reiterated by Coats<\/a>\u00a0as recently as earlier this year\u2014to provide some much needed information about how the program impacts Americans. To do so supposedly in the name of privacy concerns is even worse.<\/p>\n

It should go without saying: if the Intelligence Community is truly worried about the privacy and civil liberties of ordinary Americans, officials will take the looming Section 702 sunset as an opportunity to give lawmakers the information they need to have an informed and meaningful debate about how government spying programs impact Americans\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n

Privacy advocate Sen. Ron Wyden criticized DNI Coats for his backtracking, calling his reversal a \u201cvery, very damaging position to stake out.\u201d He warned, \u201cWe\u2019re going to battle it out in the course of this, because there are a lot of Americans that share our view that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that battle is already happening. With Congress\u2019 debate over Section 702 reauthorization heating up, now is the time to\u00a0tell your representatives in Congress<\/a>\u00a0to let this warrantless spying authority lapse.<\/p>\n

Source: NSA Reneges on Promise to Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans it Spies On | Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers should know how the laws they pass impact their constituents. That\u2019s especially true when the law would reauthorize a vast Internet and telephone spying program that collects information about millions of law-abiding Americans. But that\u2019s exactly what the Intelligence Community wants Congress to do when it considers reauthorizing a sweeping electronic surveillance authority under the expiring Section 702, as enacted by the FISA Amendments Act, before the end of the year. Intelligence officials have been promising Congress they would provide lawmakers with an estimate of the number of American communications that are collected under Section 702. That estimate is a critical piece of information for lawmakers to have as they consider whether and how to reauthorize and reform the warrantless Internet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans in the coming months. But during\u00a0a hearing on Section 702\u00a0in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, despite previous assurances, said he won\u2019t be providing that estimate out of national security and, ironically, privacy concerns. He told lawmakers it is \u201cinfeasible to generate an exact, accurate, meaningful, and responsive methodology that can count how often a U.S. person\u2019s communications may be incidentally collected under Section 702.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[712,1245,2714,1678],"class_list":["post-16988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-fisa","tag-nsa","tag-section-702","tag-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}