U.S. Court Allowed Internet Data Mining After Violations
By Laurie Asseo and Chris Strohm - Nov 19, 2013
A secret U.S. court authorized expanded government collection of Internet data for terrorism investigations even after finding “longstanding and pervasive violations” of prior court orders.
The court ruling and other documents were released last night by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in response to a lawsuit by privacy advocates. The date of the ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates was redacted, though a footnote referred to a June 2010 case, meaning the decision was issued during President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The government acknowledges that NSA exceeded the scope of authorized acquisition continuously” during prior years of authorized Internet data collection, Bates wrote, referring to the National Security Agency. He cited “systemic overcollection” of data that wasn’t authorized for collection.
An NSA review “overlooked unauthorized acquisitions that were documented in virtually every record of what was acquired,” Bates wrote.
The Obama administration is fighting a global backlash over revelations that the NSA spied on foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hacked into fiber-optic cables to get data from Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), and intercepted Americans’ communications without warrants.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/u-s-court-allowed-internet-data-mining-after-violations.html
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