"a secret FISA court order that amounts to a gift certificate for one year of warrant-free spying"

[cali]

How Many Americans Does the N.S.A. Spy On? A Lot of Them

If you are writing an e-mail, and hope to make it clear to any National Security Agency analysts who might be reading it that you are an American, it won’t help to mention that you were just at a Shake Shack or recently bought a Rawlings baseball glove, or to cite anything that you learned in a middle-school history class. According to documents published by the Guardian and the Washington Post, the N.S.A.’s “minimization procedures”—which are supposed to keep it from spying on Americans—include the note, “A reference to a product by brand name, or manufacturer’s name or the use of a name in a descriptive sense, e.g. ‘Monroe Doctrine,’ is not an identification of a United States person.”

But what is? Maybe American name brands aren’t enough—there is a Shake Shack in Dubai, as it happens—but reading the new documents, which include a secret FISA court order that amounts to a gift certificate for one year of warrant-free spying, it becomes clear that many more “United States persons” have their communications monitored, and on much vaguer grounds, than the Obama Administration has acknowledged. “What I can say unequivocally is that, if you are a U.S. person, the N.S.A. cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the N.S.A. cannot target your e-mails,” the President said earlier this week. A 2009 memorandum signed by Eric Holder establishes a broader criteria, referring to people “reasonably believed” to be located abroad. That reasonable belief, as it turns out, can be quite shaky.

Among the information that the N.S.A. is told to use includes having had a phone or e-mail connection with a person “associated with a foreign power or foreign territory,” or being in the “‘buddy list’ or address book” of such a person. It won’t be lost on anyone that Americans whose families include recent immigrants will be disproportionately vulnerable to such intrusions. (So, incidentally, will journalists.) The defaults in the analysis are telling: a person whose location is unknown, will not be treated as a United States person unless such person can be positively identified as such, or the nature or circumstances of the person’s give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person.

<snip>

The criteria also show the interaction of various N.S.A. programs: the Administration has defended the collection of telephony metadata by saying that if it ever produces an interesting match, investigators would have to go to court to get a proper warrant to look more closely. But metadata is mentioned in these documents as a basis for picking a target for the surveillance under what appears to be a blanket FISA order—not an individualized one.

<snip>

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/how-many-americans-does-the-nsa-spy-on-a-lot-of-them.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true



No, I'm not comfortable saying the President lied. Is there a more polite word? Prevaricate perhaps? Equivocate?

[daleanime]

1. Splinting hairs....

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Obviously we all have to change our signature lines on emails and here:

[The Link]

4. The President lied and continues to lie.

Hopefully this is fully exposed.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. It appears that the NSA and others

have also devised a way to spy on everyone in the US by simply having the Brits do it for them.

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. Dissembling is, I believe the word you're looking for.

dis·sem·ble [dih-sem-buhl]

verb (used with object)
1. to give a false or misleading appearance to; conceal the truth or real nature of: to dissemble one's incompetence in business.
2. to put on the appearance of; feign: to dissemble innocence.
3. Obsolete . to let pass unnoticed; ignore.
verb (used without object)
4. to conceal one's true motives, thoughts, etc., by some pretense; speak or act hypocritically.

Like the now infamous FISA court itself; 39,000 requests and 10 denials.

[Vinnie From Indy]

7. Makes ya wonder what the 13 denials were

eom

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. My guess would be that they wanted permission to spy on someone that matters. n/t

[Vinnie From Indy]

13. My exact thought as well!

Cheers!

[bvar22]

9. PolitiFactCheck gave Obama a "Pants-On-Fire" for his statements about FISA and the NSA last week.

[Harmony Blue]

10. Oh my..I didn't realize the scope of the situation till I read this

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. Or perhaps weasel words? n/t

[cali]

12. dissembling, weasel words, prevaricating, mendacity

any, sadly, would do.