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President Barack Obama has ordered curbs on the use of bulk data collected by US intelligence agencies, saying civil liberties must be respected.
Mr Obama said such data had prevented terror attacks at home and abroad, but that in tackling threats the government risked over-reaching itself.
However civil liberties groups have said the changes do not go far enough.
The announcement follows widespread anger after leaks revealed the full extent of US surveillance operations.
According to officials at the Tenth Amendment Center, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which was written and proposed specifically to make life extremely difficult for the powerful and super-secret spy agency.
In a bipartisan move, State Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and State Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.”
(Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
The results of a joint investigation conducted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 News have revealed that the NSA and its UK sister-agency, the GCHQ, pair two previously unreported and top-secret national security programs to collect in bulk and then analyze millions of SMS text messages and other digital data sent around the world each day by mobile phones.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
darkbake
Even so, I think this is a positive development. The amount of paranoia in the past 6 months about not having any privacy online or through text communication was crippling and seemed to be entering the common social community.
Agit8dChop
reply to post by darkbake
All he did was allow the government to build a new NSA wiretapping programme. He even says it straight up!
Also, he only focused on that one aspect of phone records. How many people make phone calls now a days when sms, facebook, snapchat, email are at your finger trips. Why he talk a bout the DATA monitoring?
President Barack Obama has ordered curbs on the use of bulk data collected by US intelligence agencies, saying civil liberties must be respected.
Obama will ask Attorney General Eric Holder and senior intelligence officials to forge a path forward that preserves the capabilities of the program without government retention of the data. The president is asking for a report outlining data-transfer options before March 28, when the collection program comes up for reauthorization.
Additionally, intelligence analysts will now be required to obtain approval from a secret court before querying information from the vast telephone database.
Obama: NSA Reforms Should Give Americans 'Greater Confidence'
xuenchen
This is dangerous.....
Obama will ask Attorney General Eric Holder and senior intelligence officials to forge a path forward that preserves the capabilities of the program without government retention of the data. The president is asking for a report outlining data-transfer options before March 28, when the collection program comes up for reauthorization.
Additionally, intelligence analysts will now be required to obtain approval from a secret court before querying information from the vast telephone database.
Obama: NSA Reforms Should Give Americans 'Greater Confidence'
xuenchen
This is dangerous.....
shaneslaughta
Have you ever heard that you can get in trouble for knowledge of a crime committed or planned if you fail to report it?
Well now you have non government retention of data of millions of Americans.
Sounds to me like a whistle blowing origination against the people?
Was that where you were going with the dangerous comment??
xuenchen
Partly yes.
The data retention IS dangerous via blackmail and extortion.
But mainly Eric Holder and the Secret Court are more dangerous.
Attorney General Eric Holder is regarded by some as the most dangerous man in America, but you won’t find him on any most-wanted lists.
That’s because he is accused of doing his dirty work while wearing a lawman’s badge. He’s like Little Bill, the sheriff in “Unforgiven” — any nefarious act he commits is OK because he is the law.
The evidence is accumulating that Holder is more motivated by politics than the rule of law. Many Americans are deeply troubled that Obama’s chief legal officer seems to prefer overlooking America’s rule of law and favoring executive fiat. Holder chooses not to enforce laws that he and Obama don’t like.
Examples of Holder’s questionable decisions abound, including vendettas against financial institutions and actions and lawsuits brought by his Justice Department against journalists and financial rating services. The agency’s fraud lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s for publishing financial opinions smacked of political retribution against the company that downgraded U.S. credit following the 2011 debt-limit fight. Proof? Other rating firms offering the same bond opinions were excused from the federal investigation. Further, rating firms’ bond opinions have historically been protected under the First Amendment freedom of speech.
JayinAR
The very idea of a "secret court" is so damned ridiculous and unconstitutional that it makes me want to find the nearest policy maker and punch him square in the nose.
...
That way, later on down the road, the idiots will just say, "oh yeah, the Secret Court has been around forever. No big deal. We don't get to know who they are or even if they actually exist, but we can trust them. It was them who made it so the NSA can't spy on us at whim"
Hoosierdaddy71
I thought the dems were against the patriot act,,,
So why did Obama extend it?
The NSA is just proof of their true beliefs.