So Obama claims that “nobody is listening to your telephone calls.” In fact, “he said federal judge approval is needed to actually listen to a phone call.”
And yet - NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”
If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
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A requirement of the 2008 law is that the NSA “may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States.” A possible interpretation of that language, some legal experts said, is that the agency may vacuum up everything it can domestically – on the theory that indiscriminate data acquisition was not intended to “target” a specific American citizen.
Isn’t it wonderful? They can’t “target” anyone, so they can “target” everyone. Obama lies about this. Clapper lies about this to Congress. Yes, sure, “he welcomes debate” on it.
Gotta love this too: “Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, says he was surprised to see the 2008 FISA Amendments Act be used to vacuum up information on American citizens. “Everyone who voted for the statute thought it was about international communications,” he said.”.
Well, Jameel, you see that all depends on what the NSA and the Justice Dept. decide to interpret the words “information”, “communications”, “intentional”, “target” and “was” mean.