The Executive Order That Led To Mass Spying, As Told By NSA Alumni 180
An anonymous reader writes with this Ars piece about the executive order that is the legal basis for the U.S. government's mass spying on citizens. One thing sits at the heart of what many consider a surveillance state within the US today. The problem does not begin with political systems that discourage transparency or technologies that can intercept everyday communications without notice. Like everything else in Washington, there's a legal basis for what many believe is extreme government overreach—in this case, it's Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981. “12333 is used to target foreigners abroad, and collection happens outside the US," whistleblower John Tye, a former State Department official, told Ars recently. "My complaint is not that they’re using it to target Americans, my complaint is that the volume of incidental collection on US persons is unconstitutional.” The document, known in government circles as "twelve triple three," gives incredible leeway to intelligence agencies sweeping up vast quantities of Americans' data. That data ranges from e-mail content to Facebook messages, from Skype chats to practically anything that passes over the Internet on an incidental basis. In other words, EO 12333 protects the tangential collection of Americans' data even when Americans aren't specifically targeted—otherwise it would be forbidden under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.
Re:Different era (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Yes he is.
Union breaker
Deficit balloons
Trickle Down
Sandinistas
Iran-Contra
Ollie North
Nancy making decisions when he gets Alzheimer's
You fucking got me started
Please RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
FISA? That rubber stamp is bypassed while collecting masses of data on US citizens.
Re:Haply so, but exec orders and agencies (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the executive order?
First of all, it has been modified many, many times since Ronald Reagen the last that I can find was in 2008. http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/... [fas.org]
Second, and more to your points, sprinkled throughout the document are statements like, any intelligence collected concerning United States citizens must go through the FBI / Attorney General. This is so they can begin criminal investigations using the tools (read WARRANTS) to gain physical evidence of a crime. And the collection of that data, according to the order, is tangential to foreign intelligence gathering. As an example, here is 1.1(a)
[Emphasis added]
This is 20(A):
[Emphasis added]
So sticking to the topic at hand, namely that this order authorizes warrantless surveillance of United States citizens, is patently false. That may be the way it is used but that goes counter to the executive order's language.
By the way, the "human enabled means" is the metadata you are talking about.