NSA Still Engaging In Bulk Data Collection Despite Legal Efforts To Curb Mass Surveillance
Congress passed the USA Freedom Act back in 2015 in an effort to try and curb bulk surveillance, the objective was to establish new limits on government spying. But it turns out, despite passage, it's done little to foster change as far as reigning in the ongoing NSA phishing expedition.
It's estimated that in 2016, the NSA collected more than 150 million phone records of U.S. citizens.
The annual transparency report was published last week and it confirms that the widespread spying is still taking place, despite legal efforts to try and try and stop it.
The USA Freedom Act was supposed to change things so that at the very least, the NSA was only collecting data pertaining to individuals who had suspected ties to terrorism. When it comes to their efforts in obtaining warrants for those supposed threats, it's reported that they allegedly only sought 46 warrants in 2016 to collect info regarding people they were concerned about.
Yet they collected the data from tens of millions.
The NSA has admitted that according to an internal review, it is guilty of violating surveillance limits and constraints stemming from an agreement made with a secret surveillance court (FISA). But we can rest easy now, knowing that they have pledged that they really are going to change things this time around.
They insist that those violations were unintentional.
Aside from the seeming violation to restrictions set out in the USA Freedom Act, the NSA has also recently announced that they intend to curb their spying in relation to a certain aspect of their approach, and that is the data collection pertaining to their upstream surveillance program.
They aren't changing the way they do things as far as their controversial PRISM spying program, at least not anytime soon.
Many Constitutional scholars, security professionals, and other legal experts, have maintained for years now that the NSA bulk data collection against millions of Americans is against due process of law, that it violates Constitutional law, and that it is overwhelmingly unnecessary. And yet, they still continue on spying with seemingly little oversight or restriction; for our safety.
Pics:
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Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15527882/nsa-collecting-phone-records-us-citizen-metadata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Freedom_Act
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/28/nsa-stops-surveillance-us-residents-foreign-targets
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39769426
http://animalnewyork.com/2013/the-nsa-has-always-been-spying-on-you/
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Bill or no bill, idk why it's a surprise to civilians that the government keeps our records. If fb can anyone can.
It is also not a surprise that major action is taken by alternative media and by the increasing number of people waking up to the fact that, their privacy is being violated by the very federal power they trusted. So we see now how people now encrypt their currency, communication and virtual content; I fully support that. Tank you for this article @doitvoluntarily
at this point, i doubt there are any left who are surprised
what they are doing is illegal though, so it's nice to keep track😎
Agreed. It just shows how powerless we are as a divided people.
You know, when I tell people that creeping authoritarianism is a real thing, they act like I'm crazy. And yet we've gone from privacy rights to full Big Brother and it happened so smoothly and over such a gradual period of time that nobody seemed to notice.
We are slowly boiling frogs.
Upvoted
@shayne
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