When Obama Said “There is no NSA spying on Americans,” He Lied.

“There is no spying on Americans,” said Obama to talk show host Jay Leno in August.

He lied.

In the latest revelations about the extent of NSA spying on Americans, we now learn that Obama secretly (of course) won permission from a secret surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and or more, under special (secret) circumstances. The court order, as now available on the web, still contains significant “blacked out” sections, suggesting there may be even more of concern not yet known to Americans (who are referred to as “targets” in the actual document.)

What had not been previously acknowledged, according to the Washington Post, is that the secret court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

The Post goes on to nail it:

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later.

DNI Clapper lied to Congress when he said the NSA does not spy on Americans. The President of the United States lied to his own people when he said the NSA does not spy on Americans. That’s all for today, because hell, that’s enough.

















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