Officials’ Defenses Of NSA Phone Program May Be Unraveling -- Washington Post
From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe.
But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.
In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional and the release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks.
Either of those developments would have been enough to ratchet up the pressure on President Obama, who must decide whether to stand behind the sweeping collection or dismantle it and risk blame if there is a terrorist attack.
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My Comment: I have lost count on how many times US intelligence officials have lied in public on America's intelligence operations .... so their defense of their "phone surveillance program" has long been put (for me) into the toilet. But what gets "under my jaw" is that since the start of this scandal no one has been reprimanded .... giving the impression that it is OK to lie to the American public .... because there will be no consequences.
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“It is possible that some of the same [surveillance and metadata] information . . . can be obtained by having private phone companies keep those records longer” and allowing the government to search them under tight guidelines, Obama said.
BRILLIANT!
As long as Communications Firms will collect data on all Communications, whether they keep it longer or shorter, the NSA will have the RIGHT to DEMAND that very same information. Supreme Court and Congress can't do a damn. Push comes to shove intelligence/communications firms like L3 will get a private defense contract from DoD, with or without Congressional Oversight to do the same work of NSA.
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