Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has finally admitted that intelligence officials have been collecting personal communications of innocent Americans.
The admission came in a letter to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who had a heated discussion with Clapper two months ago on the Congressional floor about what the NSA can and cannot do.
“If no one will even estimate how many Americans have had their communications collected under this law then it is all the more important that Congress act to close the ‘back door searches’ loophole, to keep the government from searching for Americans’ phone calls and emails without a warrant,” Wyden has stated.
Best Case Scenario: Due to the leaks of Snowden, the spying activities of the government are coming to an end as Americans beat back tyranny that’s threatening to kick in the door.
Worst Case Scenario: All of this is theater, and the leaks of Snowden are fake. It all amounts to an announcement by those in power that they are ready to bring in their authoritarian regime – with the bulk of their preparations not yet known.
United States intelligence officials have been scouring the personal communications of innocent Americans, the nation’s top spy chief now acknowledges, using a procedure that’s allegedly lawful and constitutionally sound.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted as much in a letter sent last week to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who two months ago was promised an answer by the DNI during a heated discussion on the floor of Congress about what the National Security Agency can and cannot do.
The debate between Wyden and the country’s top intelligence officer began much earlier than that, though, and Clapper’s latest acknowledgement comes nine months after the NSA insisted Americans needn’t worry about being targeted by the US government’s vast surveillance apparatus.
Since the George W. Bush administration, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has provided the American government with the ability to collect communications sent to or from any non US-persons located abroad, and Sen. Wyden has been one of the most adamant critics of that authority since even before the first Snowden leaks surfaced last June. Practically one year before the NSA leaker became a household name, in fact, Sen. Wyden asked the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community for details on how many Americans have been targeted by the NSA since Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act was approved in 2008 and the NSA began to sweep up the online and over-the-phone activities of Americans engaged in conversation with persons located outside of the country.
“If no one will even estimate how many Americans have had their communications collected under this law then it is all the more important that Congress act to close the ‘back door searches’ loophole, to keep the government from searching for Americans’ phone calls and emails without a warrant,” Wyden told Wired’s Danger Room back in June 2012.
When the first Snowden leaks began one year to the month later, the NSA issued a “fact sheet” that said Section 702 authority “allows only the targeting, for foreign intelligence purposes, of communications of foreign persons who are located abroad.”
“The government may not target any US person anywhere in the world under this authority, nor may it target a person outside of the US if the purpose is to acquire information from a particular, known person inside the US,” the memorandum continued.
Even then, however, Wyden wasn’t satisfied. “We were disappointed to see that this fact sheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the Section 702 authority has been interpreted by the US government,” he wrote in a joint letter to then-NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander sent last June along with the signature of Sen. Mark Udall. “In our judgment this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.”
As the NSA leaks continued to drip, last August Mr. Snowden supplied The Guardian newspaper with cold hard proof that reaffirmed Sen. Wyden’s worries.
“The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens’ email and phone calls without a warrant,” journalists James Ball and Spencer Ackerman wrote for the paper last August after seeing a secret NSA document supplied to them by Snowden.
When Clapper testified before Congress earlier this year, Wyden once more insisted on getting a straight answer out of the intelligence community’s top officer. During a January 29 intelligence hearing on worldwide threats, Wyden asked Clapper if the NSA has ever conducted “warrantless searches” on the information contained in those databases by using “specific” Americans’ identifying information to conduct those queries.
At the time, Clapper said he’d prefer not to discuss the matter in the midst of the hearing and would instead issue a declassified answer within 30 days. That official response, albeit delayed, was sent to the senator’s office last Friday, and reaffirmed what Snowden said all along.
I told ya so! No surprises here for me. The question is….what are liberals and conservatives going to do about this behavior? Can we at least agree on the illegal surveillance and the efficacy of the 4th Amendment?
It’s not like the FISA Court has garnered confidence by most astute citizens either but at least the Police State obtains a Warrant if they follow the existing process.
By the way, if you use any wireless devices( Cell phones, etc) bear in mind that your wireless devices are essentialey radios whose signals can be easily intercepted. A more secure method of sharing information is a land line; but those lines can be bugged as well
http://www.mofopolitics.com/2014/02/23/alex-jones-ukraine-unrest-orchestrated-by-nazi-collaborator-george-soros/
He LIED under oath, go to jail, no pass!!!!
I watched as my friends died in WW II..
I watched as my friends died in Korea …
I watched as my friends died in Vietnam …
None of them died for the Mexican Flag…
Everyone died for the U.S. Flag…
In Texas, a student raised a Mexican flag on a school flag pole; another student took it down.
Guess who was expelled… The kid who took it down.
Kids in high school in California were sent home this year on Cinco de Mayo because they wore T-shirts with the American flag printed on them.
Enough is enough.
This e-mail message needs to be viewed by every American;
and every American needs to stand up for America.
We’ve bent over to appease the America-haters long enough…
I’m taking a stand…
I’m standing up because the hundreds of thousands who died fighting in wars for this country, and for the U.S. Flag can’t stand up…
And shame on anyone who tries to make this a racist message…
Let me make this perfectly clear!
THIS IS MY COUNTRY!
And, because I make this statement
DOES NOT
Mean I’m against immigration!!!
YOU ARE WELCOME HERE,IN MY COUNTRY!
Welcome!
To come through legally:
1. Get a sponsor
2. Get a place to lay your head!
3. Get a job!
4. Live By OUR Rules!
5. Pay YOUR Taxes!
And
6. Learn the LANGUAGE like immigrants
Have in the past!!!
AND
7. Please don’t demand that we hand over our lifetime
Savings of Social Security Funds to you.
If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone,
Then YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
When will AMERICANS STOP giving away THEIR RIGHTS???
We’ve gone so far the other way…
Bent over backwards not to offend anyone…
But it seems no one cares about the
AMERICAN CITIZEN
that’s being offended!
WAKE UP America !!!
If You agree…
Pass this on…
If You don’t agree…
Then Just Delete It –
But Shame On You!!!!
SAVE AMERICA,THE TRATOR OBAMA needs to be stopped right now! “SCREW OBAMA”,“SCREW HILLARY CLINTON!”. The Butchers of Benghazi and the butcher of the CONSTITUTION should be in Jail !!!!
T**T DOES THIS MEAN
The nsa is spying on everyone because we have been terribly infiltrated. Many Islamist have come here via the Mexican Border. Exactly why it was never secured.
Don’t you just love it every day it seems they come out with Yes I did lie about that ,what the $#%&!@* haven’t they lied about,and why aren’t these pricks in jail by now.
james clapper is a crimminal liar, he lied to congress , where would you and i be had we done that/