FBI Quietly Changes Its Privacy Rules For Accessing NSA Data On Americans (theguardian.com) 49
An anonymous reader writes: The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans' international communications that was collected by the NSA, U.S. officials have confirmed to the Guardian. The classified revisions were accepted by the secret U.S. court that governs surveillance, during its annual recertification of the agencies' broad surveillance powers. The new rules affect a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702, the portion of the law that authorizes the NSA's sweeping "Prism" program to collect internet data. Section 702 falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and is a provision set to expire later this year. A government civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, alluded to the change in its recent overview of ongoing surveillance practices. The PCLOB's new compliance report, released last month, found that the administration has submitted "revised FBI minimization procedures" that address at least some of the group's concerns about "many" FBI agents who use NSA-gathered data. Sharon Bradford Franklin, a spokesperson for the PCLOB, said the rule changes move to enhance privacy. She could not say when the rules actually changed -- that, too, is classified. Last February, a compliance audit alluded to imminent changes to the FBI's freedom to search the data for Americans' identifying information. "FBI's minimization procedures will be updated to more clearly reflect the FBI's standard for conducting U.S. person queries and to require additional supervisory approval to access query results in certain circumstances," the review stated. The reference to "supervisory approval" suggests the FBI may not require court approval for their searches -- unlike the new system Congress enacted last year for NSA or FBI acquisition of U.S. phone metadata in terrorism or espionage cases.
Translation: You are still Serfs (Score:4, Funny)
The sad thing is, it's only Americans who are serfs in America. Canadian and citizens of the EU have real privacy rights guaranteed by US/Canada and US/EU data treaties, which are binding.
They can even sue for their rights.
You can't.
Oh, wait, serfs had the right of appeal. You don't even have that.
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What's your point? Just because treaties prevent the US from spying on EU and Canadian citizens doesn't mean those people have privacy. Those countries do plenty of spying on their own citizens. No member of the Five Eyes or, as Snowden has leaked evidence of, the Fourteen Eyes can be trusted to respect the privacy of their citizens. That includes Canada and a significant portion of the EU. Furthermore, just because international treaties make it illegal for the US to spy on some foreign citizens doesn't me
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tl;dr
The FBI just added itself to your fiends & family share plan.
Re:Can somebody summarize the summary? (Score:5, Informative)
In short, a section of the patriot act allows the FBI access to data collected by the NSA. A privacy group has been on the FBI's ass and the FBI finally submitted a new plan outlining the data access policy to the FISA court. The FISA court accepted the new rules but the details is being kept secret. The privacy group claims partial victory but won't give enough details on how they know that amount to much more than a guess.
Short enough?
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No records got kept of what the search was or was for, the amount of searching, no US courts needed.
After been exposed by whistleblowers, secret rule changes did something in secret to restore the missing internal oversight of domestic searching.
Terms like "additional supervisory approval" would point to the same vast domestic access just with more staff and a better domestic bureaucratic paper trail.
ie the "b
FISA (Score:2)
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That totally explains him. Head trauma.
Umm... (Score:3)
I think, comrade, that we might have made an error somewhere in the process of implementing this 'representative government' concept...
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I cannot understand how USA got a secret court. Proposing something like that back here in EU would (in most countries) mean political suiciside. I cannot imagine anyone (from far left to far right to anarchists to greens to intelligence agency to ...) with the slightest credibility advocating such a beast here in Finland. Not at least publicly.
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This NSA spying is needed. Govt would be in the dark if it wasn't for PRISM. Do we really want the LEO that keep us safe to be blind?
The 4th does not protect your data when you send it plaintext over the internet. Every router from you to the destination sees your information. NSA is just seeing the same thing every random router has seen since the dawn of the internet.
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Given historical use of private data and spying, you'd think that particular religious/ethnic group would have even greater concerns about mass data-collection...
Where would they get the idea? (Score:2)
The team that's implementing these "classified revisions" just needs to have it explained to them that we don't want security in exchange for reduced freedom.
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What? So, like, my naivete is in need of a wall? A big wall that keeps getting 10 ft taller?
Section 702: not "Americans" (Score:2)
Section 702 facilitates targeting and collection on non-US Persons outside the United States [tumblr.com] whose communications enters, traverses, or otherwise touches the United States, as over 70% of international internet traffic does, or as does any non-US Person outside the US using any US-based cloud or internet service.
Where US Persons come in is because US corporations and organizations are also "US Persons" [nsa.gov]. But if we suddenly say that doing foreign intelligence collection on non-US Persons outside the US shou
a summary that uses a lot of words to say nothing (Score:3)
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^_^ (Score:1)
Did anyone else's next-word predictor colour 'enhance' as 'eliminate' ?
Oh NO! (Score:2)
Legislation by regulation is lazy law. This is.. (Score:2)
Legislation by regulation is lazy law. This is legislation by secret regulations.
Troubling.
Regulations are supposed to be reviewed by congress.
A bunch of lazy or impertinent thugs inserted language that allows regulation
to pass into the status of law if unchallenged.
It is impossible to challenge a secret change....
Kafka is giggling.
Joseph Heller is giggling.
George Orwell did not author a plan, don't ya know... it was a cautionary tail.
Wait someone is knocking on the door.
I was nine and asked the grandmother