Yet Another NSA Program Raises Questions About Obama's Statements to Charlie Rose

[leveymg]

8. What's the importance of whether the NSA keeps voice and email content, or just metadata?

In one sentence, is the government still breaking the law? Sec. 702 of the Amended FISA Act of 2008 makes it illegal for the NSA to retain US person content collected from voice and email, and mandates that it be "minimized" (routinely destroyed). If it still exists and hasn't been "minimized", as the law requires, then we're now in a serious constitutional and legal crisis after the President has seemingly assured us that all that data doesn't exist, which most reasonable people would take to have the same meaning as "there's no content."

In a second sentence, it also goes to what the Agency and a future Administration can do with all those millions of messages between Americans. At some point down the line, Barrack Obama will no longer be President. Maybe, the next President will be a Republican. There will be all that raw material waiting for someone to start profiling all of us, if indeed that hasn't already occurred. And, it appears it has.