Administration Says It's Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Date: September 15, 2017 at 1:34:58 PM EDT
> To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior () attrition org>
> Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Administration Says It's Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans
>
>
> Administration Says It's Classified If They Can Let The NSA Spy On Americans
>
> Senator Ron Wyden, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spent half a decade trying to get President 
> Obama's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to answer some fairly straightforward questions about NSA 
> surveillance on Americans. As you may recall, this got so bad that Clapper flat out lied to Wyden in an open Senate 
> hearing, which inspired Ed Snowden to leak documents to Glenn Greenwald. With the Trump administration, Dan Coats 
> took over Clapper's job... and Clapper's role of obfuscating in response to important questions from Wyden concerning 
> NSA surveillance. Despite promises to the contrary, Coats (like Clapper before him) has refused to share just how 
> many Americans have their information sucked up under Section 702. Since that program is up for renewal later this 
> year, that kind of information seems quite relevant to the debate.
>
> However, as we noted back in June, Wyden has also been asking a different, and much more specific question of Coats. 
> At a hearing in June, Wyden asked:
>
> Can the government use FISA Act Section 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?
>
> This seems like a kind of important question. 702 on its face, says that it can't be used to target domestic 
> communications. Literally, the law says this: "An acquisition authorized under [this statute]... may not 
> intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of 
> the acquisition to be located in the United States."
>
> But, as we've learned, when Senator Wyden asks an "is this happening?" question -- the answer is always "yes." And, 
> once again, it appears that Coats is playing games. Coats responded to that question at the time saying: "Not to my 
> knowledge. It would be against the law." That seems like a pretty clear and definitive answer: "no." Which is as it 
> should be.
>
> But then... something weird happened. The very next day, Coats' office put out a "clarifying" statement (ruh roh...), 
> saying that Coats had "interpreted" Wyden's question to be referring specifically to Section 702(b)(4) (the part that 
> says you can't spy on domestic communications). But, that's not what Wyden had asked. He had asked about the entirety 
> of 702. So this "clarification" certainly seemed to suggest that Coats' original answer was incorrect in regards to 
> the actual question, and instead, his staff was rewriting Wyden's question to make sure he had answe
>
> < - >
>
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170914/00485538206/trump-administration-says-classified-if-they-can-let-nsa-spy-americans.shtml



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