WASHINGTON — An independent privacy and civil liberties board says the NSA's massive collection of internet data passes constitutional muster and employs "reasonable" protections designed to ensure that private American communications are not misused.
In a report released Tuesday night, the bipartisan, five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board examined a set of NSA surveillance programs disclosed by leaker Edward Snowden. The NSA uses court orders and taps on fiber optic lines to collect the data of foreigners living abroad when their emails, web chats, text messages and other communications traverse the U.S.
The collection inevitably sweeps in the communications of Americans with no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, but the board found that the NSA, FBI and other agencies take steps to protect the privacy of those people.
How do these scumbags reconcile sending all the unfiltered NSA data to Israel with protecting the privacy of American citizens and our allies?
No wonder Americans feel their government sucks big time:
Since June 2013, confidence of Americans in their government has dropped significantly. In a poll released Monday, Gallup reports a 7 point drop in confidence in the presidency (to 29 percent), a 4 point drop for the Supreme Court (to 30 percent), and a 3 point drop for Congress (to 7 percent, a record low.)
According to another poll also released by Gallup on Tuesday, the portion of Americans who believe there to be “widespread corruption” in the US has jumped from 59 percent in 2006 to 79 percent in 2013.
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