NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

> As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

Except every time the White House has said "we're only doing X.." we find out later that it wasn't true so why should we believe them now?

Re: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

#6

Post by SeanDav » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

And the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus will be holding a press conference on Monday.

Re: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

#7

Post by ilamont » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.

"As required by law"? The government violated the Fourth Amendment and the director of national security committed perjury (1). As required by law, justice officials and prosecutors should have brought charges against Clapper and other responsible parties ... yet nothing happened.

What makes the government think that we will trust them to investigate and prosecute anyone violating our rights in the future, "as required by law"?

1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-says-he-misspoke-d...

Re: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

#8

Post by tomp » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

On Monday, the Pope will convert to Islam.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk will start his journey to Mars.

Wednesday, Isis declares peace.

By Thursday, the static vs. dynamic typing debate will finally be solved.

On Friday, king Salman of Saudi Arabia will donate all his wealth to charity.

And finally, on Saturday, Elon Musk will land on Mars.

Re: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

#9

Post by mtgx » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 9:49 PM UTC

1) NSA shuts down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday.

2) NSA starts totally different and with even less oversight "aggregate" phone surveillance program by Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/us/politics/records-show-e...

Re: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday

#10

Post by digdigdag » Fri, Nov 27, 2015, 9:53 PM UTC

  "Some Republican lawmakers want to preserve bulk collection until 2017, citing the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people died."

It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when politicians use an event (bad or otherwise) to prop up controversial legislation. If their reasoning is that the bulk surveillance program is necessary to avert terrorism, then surely they must have known or, at least, gotten a hint of what was due to happen on that day. Of course, it doesn't work like that.

The NSA's "metadata" collection policies means that a great majority of the data they collect is harmless "noise". I can understand data collection when they have narrowed down their leads to a specific person or group, but the current dragnet they've set up is costing taxpayers millions to store and manage the data.