Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Obama's rule changes opened door for NSA intercepts of Americans to reach political hands


From Sara Carter at Circa:
As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama’s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned. 
Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. 
Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Some intercepted communications from November to January involved Trump transition figures or foreign figures' perceptions of the incoming president and his administration. 
Intercepts involving congressional figures also have been unmasked occasionally for some time. The NSA is expected to turn over logs as early as this week to congressional committees detailing who consumed reports with unmasked Americans' identities from their intercepts since the summer of 2016. 
This information is likely to become a primary focus of the Russia counterintelligence probe of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Circa confirmed the unmasking procedures through interviews with intelligence professionals and by reviewing previously classified documents it obtained that described the loosening of privacy requirements. 
To intelligence professionals, the public revelations affirm an undeniable reality. Over the last decade, the assumption of civil liberty and privacy protections for Americans incidentally intercepted by the NSA overseas has been eroded in the name of national security. 
Today, the power to unmask an American’s name inside an NSA intercept -- once considered a rare event in the intelligence and civil liberty communities -- now resides with about 20 different officials inside the NSA alone. 
The FBI also has the ability to unmask Americans’ names to other intelligence professionals and policymakers. And the justification for requesting such unmasking can be as simple as claiming “the identity of the United States person is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance,” according to a once-classified document that the Obama administration submitted in October 2011 for approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It laid out specifically how and when the NSA could unmask an American’s identity.
GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

8 comments:

Always On Watch said...

Today on the radio, I caught a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh's show. I am not a regular listener of his show. But my ears perked up when he said, "This is the story of the day. Find it on Circa."

I think that Rush is right that this story is indeed very important.

Will be interesting to see if Fox News covers this story tonight or tomorrow.

Always On Watch said...

Who is Sara Carter?

Anonymous said...

http://16004-presscdn-0-50.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_2377-575x321.jpg

Sara Carter, a national security correspondent told Sean Hannity on Wednesday(3/8) evening that Circa News has revealed that there are two separate investigations of Trump’s servers.

Here is her twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC

Link to Circa: http://circa.com/

*****

Judicial Watch got Huma and Clinton's 29 emails.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/new-huma-abedin-emails-reveal-additional-instances-clinton-sending-classified-information-unsecured-emails-special-favors-clinton-donors/

-HRW

Anonymous said...

Twitter video:

https://twitter.com/RavenHUWolf/status/846911672329670657

'Four' Islamic #ISIS supporters working @ #Canada #Montreal #PierreElliotTrudeauAirport ✈️ #Trudeau's #MSM Silent!

Googling how to blow up an airplane - ISIS supporters - keep their jobs!!

Pastorius said...

Sara Carter at IBA:

http://ibloga.blogspot.com/search?q=sara+carter

Anonymous said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-intelligence-state-charges-idUSKBN1702U8

State Department employee charged in making contacts with Chinese agents

Pastorius said...

An Anonymous commenter left a comment saying Farkas is employed by The Atlantic Council which is funded in part by the State Dept.

Where are you getting that information from, Anonymous?

Anonymous said...

Sources:

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/evelyn-farkas

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters

Next time, I'll hyperlink info.