Trying to tamp down concerns over U.S. surveillance powers, President Obama announced Friday he would end the National Security Agency’s ability to store phone data collected from millions of Americans.
Amid what guarantees? We didn't know this data was even being collected, much less stored, until Edward Snowden told the world. Do you trust this clown to actually do this? I don't.
The president will also require intelligence agencies to obtain approval from a FISA court – a secret U.S. court that governs surveillance of terrorist and foreign espionage targets - before accessing the records.
Since the implimentation of the Patriot Act under President Bush, this has always been the requirement. He's not saying anything new. Data of this kind has been subject to FISA court review from Day One, before it could be accessed. This is just more smokescreen.
While the president did not say the program would end, he did say the information collected would no longer be held by the NSA. He did not offer his own plan for where the phone records should be moved and will instead call on the attorney general and members of the intelligence community to recommend a transfer point by March 28 – which is when the collection program comes up for reauthorization.
Anyone want to start a pool as to what other intelligence agency winds up being the caretaker?
As part of his directive, the president also announced tighter restrictions on spying on international leaders.
I'm sure Angela Merkel and Dilma Rousseff are
so relieved to hear that!
He also said the government could no longer request data beyond two people from the terrorist target.
Two degrees of separation, in reality, isn't enough. This is the one place he's clamping down that he ought to be expanding.
He also said that ‘dozens’ of foreign leaders would be safe from NSA surveillance techniques but did not offer that protection to their advisors.
Meaning that if Angela and Dilma are talking to their advisors on the phone, they have no reasonable expectation of not being spied on.
