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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You
The surveillance experts at the National Security Agency wont tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency as part of its sweeping new counterterrorism powers. The reason: it would violate your privacy to say so.
That claim comes in a short letter sent on Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. The two members of the Senates intelligence oversight committee asked the NSA a simple question last month: under the broad powers granted in 2008?s expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, how many persons inside the United States have been spied upon by the NSA?
The query bounced around the intelligence bureaucracy until it reached I. Charles McCullough, the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the nominal head of the 16 U.S. spy agencies. In a letter acquired by Danger Room, McCullough told the senators that the NSA inspector general and NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons, McCullough wrote.
All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the Inspectors General cannot provide it, Wyden told Danger Room on Monday. 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.
That claim comes in a short letter sent on Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. The two members of the Senates intelligence oversight committee asked the NSA a simple question last month: under the broad powers granted in 2008?s expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, how many persons inside the United States have been spied upon by the NSA?
The query bounced around the intelligence bureaucracy until it reached I. Charles McCullough, the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the nominal head of the 16 U.S. spy agencies. In a letter acquired by Danger Room, McCullough told the senators that the NSA inspector general and NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons, McCullough wrote.
All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the Inspectors General cannot provide it, Wyden told Danger Room on Monday. 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.
Read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/nsa-spied/
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NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You (Original Post)
The Northerner
Jun 2012
OP
WillyT
(72,631 posts)1. K & R !!!
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)2. The onion strikes again! Good one
oh . . . wait. . . shit.
Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)3. How many have not had their communications picked up?
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)4. But I thought the NSA wasn't interested in "us"?