Obama's little-noticed gift to the USA on his way out the door, in January 2017. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Just before he left, Obama signed an executive order that made it much easier for the FBI to investigate Trump and his co-conspirators.

Thanks also to Loretta Lynch and James Clapper for their part of this.

These tweets are part of a much longer thread -- the whole thing is worth reading.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html


Jan. 12, 2017

WASHINGTON — In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.

The tweets above are included toward the end of this very long thread, accessible at this link even to those not on Twitter (but you should be). It's all worth reading:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1083931796419563520.html

We don’t know what actions that investigation took.

It is fair to assume it included mining ongoing intel from our own resources at the NSA, etc., as well as from allies.

That would have the effect of putting relevant work-product of any ally’s spying in Mueller’s hands.

12/
Meaning, even if we weren’t eavesdropping on Trump’s convo w Putin, his late-night phone calls, his admin’s back-channel contacts with Russians, etc... someone was.

Whether it was the UK, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Israel, Australia or whomever, EVERYONE spies on Russia...

13/
...and Mueller had an open folder just waiting to be filled with whatever tasty

17/
Okay, I’m spinning like a top here so let me bring this in for a landing:

Trump has spent the last two years trying to obstruct an investigation into 2016 events...

...and little did he know, his biggest problem would prove to be what he was doing in 2017-2018.