Obama administration systematically and illegally spied on Americans for years

http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of-illegal-nsa-searches-spying-on-americans

"The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.

[The FISA court] censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

"“Since 2011, NSA’s minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collections under Section 702,” the unsealed court ruling declared. “The Oct. 26, 2016 notice informed the court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

Apparently, they should have spied more.

Cool username. I think of okra every time I see it.

I like to get it fresh from the supermarket and slice it superthin, like potato chips, then put it in a bag with flour and corn meal and salt and pepper and shake it all up to coat them, then fry them in hot safflower or grapeseed oil, dipping them out with a slotted spoon.

How do you like yours? Tell me you’re not one of those heathens who boils them and eats them all gooey and stuff!

Now there’s a reliable news source - circa.com, which I’d never heard of until this moment.

The FISA court document that is referenced and quoted from is linked to right in the article.

Apparently the OP thinks things will get better under the newly appointed CIA chief, Michael D’Andrea, who is known in most circles as The Dark Prince. Not bloody likely.

The Left has been pretty united in criticizing the power given to our spy agencies to monitor American communications.

Is the OP saying he now agrees? You’ll be supporting the reforms suggested by Sen. Wyden?

Sorry, but when I’m at work, I’ve got to un-hash a bunch of redirect.vigilink crap to get to a link from here. I’m just not gonna make the effort for dubious sources. I did go to the circa.com main page and tried to find it from there, with no luck.

Here’s a link: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3718776/2016-Cert-FISC-Memo-Opin-Order-Apr-2017-1.pdf

Here’s some non-crazy analysis: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Approves New Targeting and Minimization Procedures: A Summary - Lawfare

Oh yes, Obama and his institution of the “Patriot” act, I remember it well. That was about the same time he wasn’t doing enough as President to stop 9/11.

This is one of those OPs where had it been written by the usual privacy rights advocates on this board, I would say, huh, interesting issue, and proceed to dig into it.

As it stands, one phrase keeps running through my mind: “Your guy won. Get over it.”

Thanks for these links, Richard. I read the article linked in the OP, skimmed the PDF and then read the post at Lawfare, and I gotta say that I’m not seeing evidence that the “Obama administration systematically and illegally spied on Americans for years” as put forth in the OP. I’m not seeing any intent to get around regulations or ignore the FISC directives.

Things were happening that weren’t kosher and people weren’t quite sure how to fix them. There was back-and-forth about what needed to be done and what was being done and how to reconcile the two. I think there’s an argument to made that it seems to have taken longer to arrive at the solution than it should have, but that’s not what the OP argues.

This thread seems, IMO, like nothing more than a blatant partisan attempt to “score points” and point fingers, while not actually being interested in solving any problems or making a stand on the underlying issues.

Try reading it again, this time imagining that you’re a piece of okra viewing it through a lens of slime.

At best this is an unrelated hijack. I’ll choose to interpret it this way but I suggest you don’t appear to accuse other posters of trolling.

I’m not even sure how to interpret this, but let’s try to stay on topic.

[/moderating]

Following a link from the “Is FOX News really all that bad?” thread about their latest journalistic atrocity, I was amused to see Circa was responsible for their latest gaffe. So, looks like your instincts were right on.

Hmmm. I believe this quote from the linked WaPo article should be highlighted:

So, it appears the issue of surveillance of US persons by the NSA, whether intentional or not, extends to well before the Obama Administration. Now, I’m not saying it’s not a serious issue (if correctly described in the Circa article) nor that it would be excused by “Bush did it too”, but this strongly suggests that Circa may have gotten some important facts wrong. Furthermore:

Most people don’t have the time or inclination to read 99 pages of dense, heavily redacted legalese. How about quoting one or two short passages that support your premise?

I did.

Yeah, you quoted from the Circa article. Not, apparently, directly from the PDF you referred to.

Never mind, though, I’ll assume they’re found somewhere in the PDF; I can’t be arsed to look for them.

So, what do think should be done about this?

I don’t think the intelligence agencies should be allowed to spy on Americans unless authorized to do so by a court-issued warrant, and that such warrants should become public after a set time after the warrant’s expiration - a couple of years at most.

I totally agree with this, except maybe the timing. I was outraged when Bush did it and I would have been outraged had I known that Obama did it.

Is it your opinion that the Dark Lord, or whoever Trump’s nominated guy is nicknamed, would do any different? Is it your opinion that this is a left vs. right issue, or is it a authoritarian vs. libertarian issues?