Courtesy of Mish.
Is the government watching your emails?
They are probably watching mine. The House just approved extending an eavesdropping bill another five years. The National Security Agency is collecting a staggering amount of Americans’ conversations, but only examining a small slice of them, or so they say.
The bill specifically allows eavesdropping without cause, if the government believes the conversation is with someone who lives outside the US.
Since I exchange emails with people from all over the world, the government probably has a huge file on “Mish”.
Worse yet, the Government’s amazing interpretation “of out of the country” applies to anyone in the country as well as long as the government is doing so on grounds they are looking for al-Qaida.
So if you are Muslim, Jewish, or in any other targeted religious or ethnic group, everything you do or say is probably in a government file somewhere.
“The Program”
The New York Time Op-Ed “The Program” shows a video from The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.
I have been detained at the border more than 40 times. Once, in 2011, when I was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and asserted my First Amendment right not to answer questions about my work, the border agent replied, “If you don’t answer our questions, we’ll find our answers on your electronics.”’ As a filmmaker and journalist entrusted to protect the people who share information with me, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to work in the United States. Although I take every effort to secure my material, I know the N.S.A. has technical abilities that are nearly impossible to defend against if you are targeted.
The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which oversees the N.S.A. activities, are up for renewal in December. Two members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, are trying to revise the amendments to insure greater privacy protections. They have been warning about “secret interpretations” of laws and backdoor “loopholes” that allow the government to collect our private communications. Thirteen senators have signed a letter expressing concern about a “loophole” in the law that permits the collection of United States data. The A.C.L.U. and other groups have also challenged the constitutionality of the law, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case on Oct. 29.
Laura Poitras is a documentary filmmaker who has been nominated for an Academy Award and whose work was exhibited in the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She is working on a trilogy of films about post-9/11 America. This Op-Doc is adapted from a work in progress to be released in 2013.
Loopholes Widened, Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers Approved
Wired reports House Approves Sweeping, Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers.
The House on Wednesday reauthorized for five years broad electronic eavesdropping powers that legalized and expanded the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
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