1984 Tracking Boxes in Seattle - Fully funded by the DHS

Big Brother tracking boxes in Seattle.

DHS Tracking Boxes in Seattle

• Fully funded by the Democrat Senate and the GOP House, the DHS is building a domestic 1984 Police Surveillance State network to spy on every American 24 hours a day without a search warrant. 
• Liberals pretend to be for the "little guy" while Conservatives pretend to be for "small government".  But both sides are frightened to death of a free American people.

(UPDATE  -  Following a privacy outcry concerning a wi-fi “mesh network” being installed, the Seattle Police Department announced last night that it is temporarily deactivating the network.)


Police State  -  The Seattle Police have installed a network of 160 wireless "white box" access points that are mounted on poles across the city.  Every time a cell phone or other device looks for a Wi-Fi signal the white box recognizes it and stores that data for future use.  The network can record the last 1,000 locations of a person using their cellphone’s MAC address.

The network was bought with a Department of Homeland Security grant for $2.6 million reports KIRO 7 TV News.

This is a system that could lead to the permanent tracking of an entire city’s population.



"They now own a piece of equipment that has tracking capabilities so we think that they should be going to City Council and presenting a protocol for the whole network that says they won't be using it for surveillance purposes," said Jamela Debelak of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We believe that people should be free to move about without having the government track their movements unless there really is reason to believe they're engaged in some criminal activity," said Debelak. Seattle police could not explain why the network appears to be online.

A report by The Stranger, a weekly Seattle newspaper, exposes how the boxes, which are attached to utility poles and include vertical antennae, can track cellphones even if they are not connected to the system’s wi-fi network.

 

Aruba – the company that provided the boxes to the Seattle Police Department – brags in its technical literature about how the boxes can keep track of “rogue” or “unassociated” devices, in other words your cellphone even if you have refused to let the system access your device’s wi-fi component.

The user’s guide for one of Aruba’s recent software products states: “The wireless network has a wealth of information about unassociated and associated devices.” That software includes “a location engine that calculates associated and unassociated device location every 30 seconds by default… The last 1,000 historical locations are stored for each MAC address.”

When reporters Matt Fikse-Verkerk and Brendan Kiley asked the Seattle Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security to explain what the boxes were for, the DHS refused to comment and Seattle Police detective Monty Moss would only state that the department “is not comfortable answering policy questions when we do not yet have a policy.”

See more at Constitution campaign.org  and  Infowars News.

Wal-Mart working with DHS to

Spy on Shoppers "1984" Style



Police install a Big Brother tracking box in Seattle.
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Big Brother is Watching You
Our bi-partisan Big Brother is fully and eagerly funded by the Democrat Senate and the GOP House.  Welcome to the future.  See some of our recent articles:
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DHS to scan every face at local hockey game
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Government Satellites to Control Your Car's Speed
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DHS installs spy scanners at shopping malls
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Big Brother is Tracking All Cars - The Bill of Rights is Abolished

The NSA hacks circle the wagons to defend unconstitutional spying

Orwellian Speak

"Much of the press has called this a surveillance

program, it is not."

Senator Diane Feinstein (D)

It is all an Orwellian control of the language to fool the simple minded.  War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  NSA surveillance does not exist.

Also note that all this unconstitutional spying never alerted us to Major Hasan, the Boston Bombing, the mall attack in Kenya, the attack on our embassy in Libya or the recent slaughter of Pakistani Christians by terrorists.

So who are we really spying on?  If we are not watching terrorists, then a process of elimination says we are spying on the average American and building files on their friends, emails, politics, text messages, weapons and interests.

U.S. officials refused to answer lawmakers’ questions in public on Thursday about the full scope of the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ data, including whether it has ever sought to acquire large volumes of cellphone location information or other records.

The neo-fascist hacks won't say in public if they are spying on the American people.  Everything is "classified".  Effectively our leaders are telling the people to fuck off and go away.

NSA Director Keith Alexander dodged questions

NSA Director Keith Alexander dodged questions by a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether the agency has ever tried to augment its broad collection of virtually all Americans’ phone-call records by gathering data that would indicate the callers’ locations. He noted that intelligence officials had given a classified answer to the question reports the Washington Post.

“Is it the goal of the NSA to collect the phone records of all Americans?” Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) asked.

“I believe it is in the nation’s best interests to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we could search when the nation needs to do it, yes,” Alexander said.

Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Udall and other lawmakers have introduced reform legislation that would, among other things, end the phone records collection, while allowing for a more limited program.

On Thursday, Wyden accused U.S. officials of not being more forthcoming about intelligence-collection programs.

“The leadership of your agencies built an intelligence-collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people,” he said. “Time and time again, the American people were told one thing about domestic surveillance in public forums while government agencies did something else in private.”

At the start of the hearing, the Democratic chair of the committee, Diane Feinstein, outlined a separate bill she is introducing with Republican vice-chairman Saxby Chambliss.

Their proposed legislation broadly echoes the small tweaks the intelligence establishment says it will consider, but does not go further.

Republican Senator Chambliss defended the unconstitutional spying and said that "while we are here in large part because of the Snowden leaks", they had caused huge damage to the US and its interests and "would ultimately claim lives", something he said Snowden should be held to account for.

The Feinstein-Chambliss bill would also widen the powers of the NSA, allowing laws that authorise foreign spying to be continued for a period of time after targets enter the United States.  Never mind that the 4th Amendment requires a search warrant.

The Boston Bombing.
All this unconstitutional spying never alerted us to Major Hasan, the Boston Bombing, the mall attack in Kenya, the attack on our embassy in Libya or the recent slaughter of Pakistani Christians by terrorists.

So who are we really spying on?  If we are not watching terrorists, then a process of elimination says we are spying on the average American and building files on their friends, emails, politics, text messages, weapons and interests.

Other senators on the committee criticised media reporting and argued the essence of the surveillance apparatus should be left in place. Republican Senator Dan Coats said journalists were throwing "raw meat out there", suggesting the reporting was misleading the public. He cautioned against overreacting "for fear of the public saying, 'Oh, that headline makes me nervous,'" reports the UK Guardian.

Democrat Jay Rockefeller said that public "misunderstandings" of the unconstitutional spying risked dismantling a system of surveillance that has taken a decade to construct in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. "You don't build a Roman fort and then build another one next door because you've made a mistake," he said.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden who, as a member of the committee, has for years been privy to classified briefings that he cannot discuss in public. "You talk about the damage that has been done by disclosures, but any government official who thought this would never be disclosed was ignoring history. The truth always manages to come out," he said.

Surviving The Surveillance State

Glenn Beck's "SURVEILLANCE STATE"

 

 

 

"You're shitting me!" 
"You want me to preserve and protect what?"
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Big Brother is bipartisan.  Republican Senator Dan Coats (above) attacked those "evil" journalists for throwing "raw meat out there", suggesting the reporting was misleading the public about the unconstitutional spying by Big Brother. 
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Coats cautioned against overreacting "for fear of the public saying, 'Oh, that headline makes me nervous.'"
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The Constitution and Bill of Rights has no meaning to the Statists from both parties.  People exist to serve the State.  Never question your Masters.

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“Nothing exists except an endless present in which
the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984    

Liberals use Children in Slavery Re-Enactment on Field Trip

Education - A "Profession" of Retards

• Retarded liberal "educators" used a school field trip to bully black children into reenacting their white guilt wet dreams on slavery.
• What next?  A field trip for Jewish kids to reenact the ovens at Auschwitz?
• No wonder kids are graduating as semi-illiterates knowing little to nothing about anything.

Retard Alert  -  Those who can do.  Those who can't teach.  Never have those words been more true.

African-American middle school students were forced to act as slaves, pretending to be sold at auction and standing in the darkness of a would-be slave ship, all while enduring racial epithets, a human rights lawsuit filed by a student's mother claims.

Sandra Baker told the Hartford Courant this week that her daughter, who is black, said she and other students in her seventh grade class were “terrorized” during a field trip to Nature’s Classroom in Charlton, Massachusetts. Parents of the students, who traveled from Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy 45 minutes away, were not told their children would be participating in a slavery reenactment when giving permission for the trip.

The girl told her mother that on the four-day trip in November 2012, the class was forced to pretend to pick cotton, simulate the quiet confinement of riding on a slave ship, and reenact the Underground Railroad - the network that slaves used to travel north and reach freedom before the American Civil War in 1861 reports RT News.
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White instructors, who assumed the roles of slave owners and oppressors, told the students that while on board the “ship,” they would have no choice but to go to the bathroom on each other and would be thrown overboard if they were sick.

“I went into a dark room where I had to sit on my bottom with my knees together,” the girl wrote in a statement read by her father this week in front of the Hartford school board. “My legs fell asleep and were hurting.”

She went on to describe how the students were told they would be whipped if they attempted to escape, some even forced to dance for their “masters.”

“I had to hold my head down and could not make eye contact with the white masters,” the 12-year-old stated. “I heard the instructor ask kids behind me to open their mouths so their teeth could be checked. Some were asked to jump up and down.”

Jon Santos, the director of Nature’s Classroom, told The Washington Post that the three-hour exercise was meant to teach students empathy for what slaves were put through, along with lessons about modern day bullying (the current liberal pussy buzzword of the day).

A social worker and mediation specialist (now there is a bullshit occupation) working for Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy spoke with students earlier this year after they were put through the slavery simulation. An April report seen by the Hartford Courant noted that while some of the students said they have a new found “appreciation for what we have today,” others were clearly upset.

One student wrote that he “started to believe some of the things the group leaders were saying,” and another wrote that it “did not feel like it was a joke, did not know if the leaders were joking.”

Students told the social worker that the staff members – who Santos said average around 25 years of age - used terms such as “Going to get the dogs to eat you” and “Dumb dark-skinned Negro person, how dare you look at me.”

They also reportedly said, “You’re not a person, you’re property,” and “Don’t look me in the eyes, you’re worthless, keep your head down.”


George Carlin  - Stupid People  

 

DEA has been spying on your phones since 1987

Trashing the Bill of Rights since 1987

The Big Brother DEA logged 4 billion phone

calls a day since 1987.

What the Fuck!  -  The fascist DEA is issuing their own search warrants to spy on billions of phone calls every God Damn fucking day!  No judge or grand jury is consulted.  Instead the DEA issues their own phony bullshit “administrative subpoenas” to bully phone companies into helping them spy on Americans.

I am so fucking tired of the fascist shit.

Please note this Fascist crap is totally bipartisan.  No matter who controls Congress or the White House this unconstitutional crap just gets bigger and bigger.

For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counter-narcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.       

The Hemisphere Project, an unconstitutional "partnership" between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.
      

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987 reports the New York Times.
 

The project comes to light at a time of vigorous public debate over the proper limits on government surveillance and on the relationship between government agencies and communications companies. It offers the most significant look to date at the use of such large-scale data for law enforcement, rather than for national security.
      

The scale and longevity of the data storage appears to be unmatched by other government programs, including the N.S.A.’s gathering of phone call logs under the Patriot Act. The N.S.A. stores the data for nearly all calls in the United States, including phone numbers and time and duration of calls, for five years.
      

Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say; technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record. Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.

The slides were given to The New York Times by Drew Hendricks, a peace activist in Port Hadlock, Wash. He said he had received the PowerPoint presentation, which is unclassified but marked “Law enforcement sensitive,” in response to a series of public information requests to West Coast police agencies.
      

The program was started in 2007, according to the slides, and has been carried out in great secrecy.
       

“All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” one slide says. A search of the Nexis database found no reference to the program in news reports or Congressional hearings.
      

The Obama administration acknowledged the extraordinary scale of the Hemisphere database and the unusual embedding of AT&T employees in government drug units in three states.

"The further a society drifts from truth
the more it will hate those who speak it."
George Orwell

But they said the project, which has proved especially useful in finding criminals who discard cellphones frequently to thwart government tracking, employed routine investigative procedures used in criminal cases for decades and posed no novel privacy issues.
      

Crucially, they said, the phone data is stored by AT&T, and not by the government as in the N.S.A. program. It is queried for phone numbers of interest mainly using what are called “administrative subpoenas,” those issued not by a grand jury or a judge but by a federal agency, in this case the D.E.A.
      

Brian Fallon, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement that “subpoenaing drug dealers’ phone records is a bread-and-butter tactic in the course of criminal investigations.”
      

Fallon said that “the records are maintained at all times by the phone company, not the government,” and that Hemisphere “simply streamlines the process of serving the subpoena to the phone company so law enforcement can quickly keep up with drug dealers when they switch phone numbers to try to avoid detection.”
      

He said that the program was paid for by the D.E.A. and the White House drug policy office but that the cost was not immediately available.
      

Officials said four AT&T employees are now working in what is called the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which brings together D.E.A. and local investigators — two in the program’s Atlanta office and one each in Houston and Los Angeles.
      

GOP joins Obama to abolish the 4th Amendment - NSA Police State Spying Backed

"The Washington elites fear liberty.

They fear you."

Congressman Justin Amash

Constitutional Federalist

The "Conservative" GOP controlled House of Representatives joined hand-in-hand with Comrade Obama to continue the reckless violation of the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights and conduct massive Police State spying on all Americans.

The House engaged in a heated debate Wednesday over an amendment from Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) to halt the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone record data.

"We're here today for a very simple reason: to defend the Fourth Amendment, to defend the privacy of each and every American," Amash said as he introduced his measure. Lawmakers' votes, he said, would answer one simple question, "Do we oppose the suspicionless collection of every American's phone records?"

Amash warned that "opponents of this amendment will use the same tactic that every government throughout history has used to justify its violation of rights: fear." And the measure's foes -- even those within his own party -- did not disappoint reports the Huffington Post.

Apparently, the answer was no.  The House voted 217-205 to defeat the amendment Wednesday evening.

Opposition to government surveillance has created an unlikely alliance of libertarian Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, The House vote split the parties, with 94 Republicans in favor and 134 against, while 111 Democrats supported the amendment and 83 opposed it.

Amash's measure, offered as an amendment to the Department of Defense appropriations bill, would have prevented the government from invoking Section 215 of the Patriot Act to scoop up phone call metadata -- information about whom people are calling and when, but not the content of the calls -- unless the government had a reasonable suspicion that a specific target was involved in terrorism.

Co-sponsored by liberals including Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the amendment represents the first time either chamber of Congress has weighed in on the revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

 

 

Conservatives Against Freedom 

Right-Wingers join Obama to support the Big Brother 1984 Surveillance State.

So-called GOP small government "Conservatives" of all types came out of the woodwork in rabid fashion against the Bill of Rights.  134 Republicans (joined by 83 Democrats) voted in favor of the Big Brother 1984 Surveillance State.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who serves on the House Intelligence Committee,  said she would be voting against Amash’s amendment.

Bachmann made the case that the program doesn’t violate Fourth Amendment rights because the businesses own the records being obtained, not the individuals.  “There is no expectation of privacy,” Bachmann said. “Individuals do not own the records.”

The clueless Bachmann fails to understand that the government needs a proper search warrant to access the information of individuals and businesses.  Businesses cannot be recruited to act as agents for the government in order to avoid the Bill of Rights.

Arguing that phone records collection helps protect a "nation under siege," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "Passing this amendment takes us back to September 10."

Pointing to a Wall Street Journal editorial that came out Wednesday, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) contended that passing the amendment would reward Snowden.


Click here for the roll call vote by member.

(UK Guardian)          (Politico)

Americans can legally be kidnapped and held without trial - The NDAA returns



Federal Court Overturns Block on NDAA Indefinite Detention


The Second Circuit court has overturned a temporary injunction which had blocked the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – meaning Americans can now once again be kidnapped and held without trial.

In September 2012, United States District Court Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA was unconstitutional and blocked it permanently. However, within 24 hours of the ruling the Obama administration lodged an appeal and the law has been under temporary injunction until now.

 

Americans can once again “legally” be snatched off the street and detained without trial based on the mere claim that they provided aid or support to terrorists, despite this being a total violation of habeas corpus reports Infowars News.

 

The Tenth Amendment Center has a detailed breakdown of the ruling;

 

“In layman’s terms, Forrest put a stop to indefinite detention, and the Second Circuit overturned that. It also permanently prohibited Forrest from attempting to do so again, ordering her to proceed with the case consistent with their opinion. NDAA “indefinite detention” powers are alive and well.”

 

The group points out that the new Second Circuit ruling is completely incorrect because it claims that Section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA says nothing about the government’s ability to detain citizens.

 

In reality, section 1021 states, “Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force . . . includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons . . . pending disposition under the law of war.”

 

The ruling stems out of Hedges v. Obama, a lawsuit filed in January 2012. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and several other high profile figures brought the case in order to protest against the potential that the law could be used to harass outspoken journalists and political activists.

 

 

The Final Loss of Freedom in America NDAA.

 

 

 



Bi-Partisan Fascism

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Republican & Democrat  Senators were falling all over each other to vote to
grant the President the right to imprison Americans without a trial.
The GOP controlled House had already rubber-stamped this insanity.

The only Senate no votes against the neo-fascist NDAA

NAYs ---12
Burr (R-NC) Coburn (R-OK) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID)	DeMint (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Lee (R-UT) Merkley (D-OR)	Paul (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Rubio (R-FL)

November 30, 2011

 

Privacy group to petition Supreme Court to kill NSA spy program

The People ask the Supreme Court to protect them from massive bipartisan spying programs created by Congress

As "Liberal" Democrats and "Conservative" Republicans in Congress work to abolish the Bill of Rights, groups of private citizens like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU step forward to protect the Liberty of the People from their own politicians.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said Thursday it will petition the U.S. Supreme Court to abolish the law that lets the National Security Agency collect data on Americans’ telephone calls.

The Domestic Surveillance Project, an arm of the EPIC, will file the petition on Monday, Raw Story reported.


Domestic Surveillance Project Director Amie Stepanovich said, “EPIC truly believes that this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court exceeded its authority, is not acting in accordance with the law and needs to be overturned — and cannot be allowed to continue conducting this surveillance,” Raw Story reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has challenged the NSA’s data-collection powers, too.

EPIC has filed prior petitions of similar nature to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander.

“We believe that the NSA’s collection of domestic communications contravenes the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution and violates several federal privacy laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended,” the petition states, Raw Story reported.


Read more: Washington Times.

5-year-old’s Suspension Over Toy Cap Gun Reversed

A "stock" child photo with a "fake" gun,
but teachers today are not smart
enough to figure that out.

IDIOT ALERT!
Moron teachers interrogated a 5 year old for two hours until he wet himself


A Maryland kindergartner who wet himself with fear while being interrogated over a toy gun back in June has had a suspension reversed, with the incident being struck from the record after the child’s family hired a lawyer and fought school officials on the matter.

As reported by The Blaze at the time, the five-year-old from Dowell Elementary School in Lusby, Maryland was questioned alone by school officials for over two hours after he showed a friend his cowboy-style cap gun on the way to school.

Officials finally called the boy’s mother in when he wet his pants.

The school principal even stated that had the gun been “loaded” with caps, then it would have been “deemed an explosive and police would have been called in.”

The Washington Post reports that officials wrote to the boy’s family last week to inform them that the 10 day suspension will be reversed “in its entirety”.

The letter, sent to the family’s attorney, says school officials reviewed the record, “carefully considering both the needs of the student and those of the school system.”

The school had previously refused to remove the incident from the boy’s school record, stating that it should remain on the permanent record because other children had been traumatized by the incident.

After repeated efforts by the attorney Robin Ficker, the school finally relented and agreed to rescind the punishment and the mark on the boy’s record. The mother, who refused to back down on the case, stated “I’m just glad they finally decided to make right what they had done so wrong.”

Yes, teachers are that fucking stupid.

“We need to talk about having common sense when it comes to talking about school safety. We need not to overreact on young children and terrorize them… “He was a normal, typical 5-year-old who had a toy.” the mother added.

Ficker, who was also the attorney involved in the infamous Hello Kitty bubble gun incident back in January, filed a detailed and lengthy report that alleged teachers bribed other students with a school currency called “Husky Bucks” to provide “statements” about the incident. The statements were then written by the principal, and were not sent to the boy’s family.

Ficker’s report also made note of the fact that both the boy and his sister were questioned in an “intimidating manner at length.” Ficker also made the point that five-year-old’s often do not have the understanding to grasp the gravity of student conduct codes.

“It is common for kindergartners to play Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers or to bring things to Show and Tell,” the appeal said. “In any case, telling a little 5 year old something once or twice, is often not enough.”

The reversal of the suspension comes at the same time as the dismissal of criminal charges against 14-year-old Jared Marcum who refused to stop wearing a gun rights T-shirt to school in West Virginia.

(Infowars News)


Stupid People  -  George Carlin

Obama Lied: He Collects Data Without A Warrant

Obama Lied

Top Secret Rules Allow NSA To Collect U.S. Domestic

Data Without A Warrant

(Editor  -  Funny.  Why is it almost always the British press breaking American stories? Also, don't you just love "secret courts" and "secret rulings" and "secret warrantless spying".)


The UK Guardian reports that top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a search warrant as required by the Bill of Rights.

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target “non-US persons” under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used reports the UK Guardian.

The procedures cover only part of the NSA’s surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Fisa court’s oversight role has been referenced many times by Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials as they have sought to reassure the public about surveillance, but the procedures approved by the court have never before been publicly disclosed.

The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;
• Retain and make use of “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;
• Preserve “foreign intelligence information” contained within attorney-client communications;
• Access the content of communications gathered from “U.S. based machine[s]” or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans’ call or email information without warrants.

The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA’s foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.


Senate extends warrantless wiretapping under FISA
From just a few months ago, the Senate votes to spy on Americans without search warrants.