FROM 2013 to 2015, the NSA and CIA doubled the number of warrantless searches they conducted for Americans’ data in a massive NSA database ostensibly collected for foreign intelligence purposes, according to a new intelligence community transparency report.
The estimated number of search terms “concerning a known U.S. person” to get contents of communications within what is known as the 702 database was 4,672 — more than double the 2013 figure.
And that doesn’t even include the number of FBI searches on that database. A recently released Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling confirmed that the FBI is allowed to run any number of searches it wants on that database, not only for national security probes but also to hunt for evidence of traditional crimes. No estimates have ever been released of how often that happens.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA collects hundreds of millions of digital communications at rest and in transit from the major internet backbones running in and out of the U.S., as well as from Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other companies, involving “targets” overseas.
Americans’ communications are constitutionally protected from warrantless searches, but when those communications are swept up by the NSA “incidentally” to its main goal, those protections have been essentially ignored.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said the practice of searching the database for American communications is not “unlawful” because the content is collected legitimately in the first place — and because there are protections against sharing Americans’ identities unless it’s absolutely necessary.
But many privacy activists, as well as lawmakers including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., describe this practice as a “backdoor” search because it’s a way to gather evidence on Americans without getting court approval.
“If intelligence officials are deliberately searching for and reading the communications of specific Americans, the Constitution requires a warrant,” said Wyden in a press release in June 2014.
The ODNI director of legislative affairs, Deidre M. Walsh, wrote in a 2013 letter to Wyden that the NSA approved 198 searches, or “queries,” for the content of American communications in the 702 database — while the CIA approved “fewer than 1900” queries — for about 2100 overall.
That’s the number that more than doubled in 2015. But the ODNI doesn’t make its transparency reports easy to understand, leaving open the possibility of misinterpretation. For instance, the 2015 figure includes “recurring queries” — basically searches using the same terms more than once. In 2013, the NSA said its estimate “may” have included repeated queries counted individually. That could account for some of the increase between 2013 and 2015.
However, the number of queries for metadata — information about who the communications are to and from, and so on, rather than their content — also went up dramatically.
According to the 2014 letter to Wyden, NSA conducted “approximately 9,500 queries” of American metadata in 2013, including repeated queries — and excluding CIA searches, because the agency doesn’t track that information.
In 2015, the ODNI reported 23,800 searches on metadata — excluding “one IC element” that couldn’t provide statistics — presumably the CIA.
“The number of backdoor searches doubling since last reported shows that warrantless Section 702 surveillance is a significant and growing problem for Americans,” Jake Laperruque, privacy fellow at The Constitution Project, wrote in a message to The Intercept after reading the new report.
The missing data from the FBI is of great concern to privacy advocates. The USA Freedom Act, passed in June 2015, “conspicuously exempts the FBI” from disclosing how often it searches the 702 database, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) wrote in a letter to the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in October 2015.
“There is every reason to believe the number of FBI queries far exceeds those of the CIA and NSA,” POGO wrote. “To present a fair overview of how foreign intelligence surveillance is used, it is essential that you work with the attorney general to release statistics on the FBI’s use of U.S. person queries.”
The new report also leaves unanswered how many Americans’ communications are collected in the first place.
Fourteen lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee sent Clapper a letter on April 22 demanding to know how often programs authorized under Section 702 vacuum up communications belonging to innocent Americans. Others, including Sen. Wyden, members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and dozens of civil liberties activist groups have been asking the same question for years.
Clapper recently said he is working to provide an estimate on the number of Americans caught up in the dragnet.
Aug 1, 2013 NSA Collects ‘Word for Word’ Every Domestic Communication
Judy Woodruff sits down with two former NSA officials who blew the whistle on what they said were abuses at the NSA, along with that agency’s former inspector general, to talk about whether that secretive agency is recording all domestic calls in the U.S.
https://youtu.be/az-YWMNWQuU
Mormon church I attended two weeks ago, “stake president” said they know that 40% of Mormons in the Bountiful, UT area masterbate to online porn! Wonder how they found that out?
They sent two kids from Provo on a VERY SPECIAL local mission in Bountiful… ;-)
FUN FACTS: The spiritual leader of each ward is called the bishop (or the branch president for branches). He is a member of the congregation who has been asked to serve as a volunteer in this position. A group of wards forms a STAKE, and the leader of a STAKE is a STAKE president. “STAKE” is not a term found in the New Testament, but is taken from Old Testament tent imagery in which the “tent,” or church, is held up by supporting stakes (see Isaiah 54:2).
January 9, 2014 500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent *It’s Never to Protect Us From Bad Guys*
No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they also do it to crush dissent, and then give a false rationale for why they’re doing it.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/government-spying-citizens-always-focuses-crushing-dissent-keeping-us-safe.html
INSIDER TRADING again these criminals only need your secret data to SCAM the market EVERY DAY!
The convicted prison INMATE TOM DELAY is in PRISON for doing the same as these alphabet soup jerks PUT them in PRISON.
Great article Jenna. Thanks,
Do more research about Databricks.
Work being done there is a little more ‘targeting’ than just mass data collection.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-investments-social-media-mining-looms-large/
From Lee Fang’s article
Good for them. Find those murdering psychopath demons and bring them to justice!
SECURITY – – is lacking. BUT that isn’t new, failure to con nest the dots – followed by over-kill.
ACCORDINGLY there are no longer any American citizens worthy of trust…
Your neighborhood mom & pop store knows you.. They trust you – they know your family, who does what for a living, your mother, sister, brother, father. Wall Street – – the banks – – and credit cards you can go anywhere – as a stranger WHO ARE YOU – I don’t know you – why should I trust you. – – – so why should I help you – – – where are you from – why should I trust you??
SECURITY – ?? TERRORIST?? FRIEND or FOE and who are you afraid of today
Governor Christie said he would not allow 5/6 year old refugees into New Jersey – – He is going to keep you safe?? The LUNATICS are running the ASYLUM……. I N S A N I T Y
Americans often complain their government never achieves what it sets out to do. But this has hidden benefits.
The United States has built the world’s strongest military by killing people it never meant to kill (collateral damage). And its agencies endlessly analyze and exploit data it never meant to collect (incidental collection).
In the words of the NSA’s theme song:
“The United States has built the world’s strongest military by killing people it never meant to kill”
Yes and we’ve seen more than enough blowback for that.
We have? I’m not exactly seeing people suffering agonizingly and painfully on the streets saying ‘my government, my government, stop what you’re doing or else’. Well not unless they’re getting branded as domestic terrorists (it happens occasionally I guess). I wouldn’t classify what we’ve been getting as anything like blowback. It’s barely a light breeze bringing the smell of air freshener. Not saying we should be getting attacked or anything that awful (or that anyone should) — but are we really seeing blowback if we are the ones getting the ‘right’ to sanction anybody we disagree with and getting everybody else to sanction them too? If we’re still able to invade countries and blow peace brokering if other countries are having success and still claim the moral high-ground… is that blowback?
Think of blowback here defined like the CIA would use it.
When Obama taps his iPad or whatever to rain down death from above by robots, it’s an unspeakable horror. Yet the fact that it will inspire more horror in the future is an additional factor beyond that actual event which is also obviously wrong. That kind of effect which follows as a secondary reverberate horror is the definition of blowback that I think we should be using.
Of course I also agree with you, Non’importante and call very loudly for more dissent by our willfully ignorant global populace.
“Yes and we’ve seen more than enough blowback for that.”
Blowback? You mean blow-forward don’t you? If the US engages in foreign policy initiatives (AKA regime change) that produce predictable outcomes (anti-Americanism), then can that reaction be rightfully characterized as “blowback” (which is defined as “the unintended adverse results of a political action or situation”). The intended radicalization of the Muslim world predictably provides ample justification for future regime change specifically, and the ever-evolving pacification of Islam in general. The result of US foreign policy is the type of “hope and change” that Obama envisioned all along.
Libertarian foreign policy radio guy Scott Horton would call that “backdraft.”
Not unforeseen, easily predicted, yet they do it anyway.
Shoot first and search later?
Is it any different than writing to Putin? Not really. They like to keep up the facade that what they are doing has anything to do with the people, but the veracity of their exclamations is as vacuous as those of ‘Chicken Little’! We, the people, have been severely screwed already! More is on the horizon from our infernal liars in power!
These spy agency’s suck up massive amounts of our information thinking that all of it is relevant, but what if…we decided to spike the information with massive amounts of BS that they would have to either go through and validate, accept, or discard? We could make their task massively more difficult, if not impossible, to do. And imagine their difficulty at determining how to sort this out without a known algorithm provided by the act of a single person. How could they sort out all of the false information provided by a myriad of people from the truth? It would slow them down badly for a while and we would get time to fight back!
The spy zuckers feel very sure in their operating environment. The military buckers feel very strong and secure in their operating environment. The wallstreet monchanging suckers feel very good in their operating environment. The elected muckers feel very righteous in their operating environment to the point the harm they do to all by miss-management and govt shutdowns is no harm at all.
The combined sum of these uckers is that they are leaning on the idea they don’t need the population so much any more. Their attitude seems “Why put money into a mainstreet sinkhole?”.
Warrantless searches. Tuesday Night Kill List Meetings. Bail Out(s). Bail In(s). Martial Law, at the very least all around the exterior 100 miles of the U.S…. and actually, if the reports are true, anywhere, everywhere on planet earth if Empire wants to willy-nilly take ya out, regardless of age, race, gender; even if it happens to be at a wedding, funeral, or at a hospital. To this monkey’s mind, from a warrantless search (to being a lightning rod) to being Droned ain’t really much of a stretch, right…? What with apples being oranges and all, lately; smoldering steel and concrete buildings falling at free fall speeds, truth tellers remanded to dungeons, not one candidate for President of the U.S. renouncing war, t’all… Humans being – as opposed to making a lifestyle of militarism – don’t have time for this kind of ill will in their lives and certainly no time to make a practice of harming, generally. Here’s to unwarranted acts of kindness…
Unwarranted acts of kindness… probably the one warrantless thing we need more of, and the one thing that’s without a warrant that we’ll never get more of?
I know a few CIA guys, and they probably wouldn’t mind me popping a few yards signs …
like SPY LIVES HERE,
I SUPPORT DRUGLORDS,
WE LIE,
I PAY DRUG DEALERS CASH,
DESPOT LEADERS RULE,
WE’LL KILL YOU AND GET AWAY WITH IT,
SINALOA CARTEL IS BASED IN CHICAGO AND WE KNOW IT BUT CAN’T DO CRAP ABOUT IT
So the only operative needed to be understood by citizens is everything the govt does is illegal and anything said is a lie. This way you won’t be shocked when you’re hauled away to rot in one of the many privatized prisons. Privacy is now merely a suggestion chuckled over cocktails by dubious shady types living in expensive abodes on the beltway. Face it, we the people lost the war many decades ago, we just didn’t realize it yet. The surveillance state is almost firmly in place and if don’t have it in your neighborhood fret not, it’s coming soon to your neck of the woods. Ed Snowden tried, he really did thank goodness, but I’m afraid he was about 50 years too late. So a portion of the populace can go by blindly doing what lots of good people do, living quiet simple lives, there are others that will be caught in the machine, torn asunder by the wheels of false accusations, destroyed beyond all hope, in a morass created and run by psychopaths bent on destroying mankind. Sorry!!
I fear you are right. And, as you say, those who have brought this crappy new world to us have immunized themselves from any of the consequences. We are doomed.
I’d bet anything this is related to the elections: during the primaries, surveillance goes into hyper drive!
Time to at least order forensic audits of the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI and the Fed — oopsy, I forgot, President Obama is still in office!
Never mind . . .
Time to cut to the chase. The USG via the Congressional stooges for the Executive DOJ, FBI, NSA, CIA, DHS, DEA, Treasury/IRS, are on the verge of completely eradicating every single god given vestige of privacy the human specie on this planet was guaranteed by the Constitution. The only question left..is how many citizens recognize the urgency of the moment, and what will they do about it once the jackbooted thugs of the USG start KICKING IN DOORS TO CONFISCATE EVERY WEAPON IN AMERICA. Because THAT is what is coming.
America is entering the “At least it wasnt me” phase.
The intelligence agencies, military and police can not be trusted with mass surveillance technology, it is secretly being abused on a vast scale.
The dangers of mass surveillance is that it allows the gathering up of potential blackmail information on politicians, judges and even certain members of the public that they would want take revenge on. The data that is collected can also be used in secret criminal programs to harass someone like organized stalking/gang stalking. Illegal programs like this have existed in the past, the FBI’s COINTELPRO is just one of them.
News report from KENS 5 by Joe Conger, San Antonio, Texas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wetCL4i50E
Central Coast News by Candice Nguyen. This news report was shown in California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB-MlhPmXqk
TV News Story on gang stalking by Erin Macpherson from 5 News WDTV in West Virginia
http://www.wdtv.com/wdtv.cfm?func=view§ion=Fox-10&item=Adult-Bullying-Victims-Speak-Out12826
Daily Mail ‘I was turned into a pariah for complaining about a yob’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195399/Woman-branded-potentially-violent-council-complaining-damaged-flowerbed.html
American TV show called “What Would You Do?” This video illustrates how easy it is to recruit complete strangers to harass someone. This is similar to how gang stalking works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDJl9j937EU
the threads make for interesting conversation..
I’ll give you an estimate: all of ’em.
Revolution is the only recourse!
robertsrevolution.net
I made this point on another article, all these great leaks Snowden’s incredibly heroic act, LuxLeaks, Panama Papers – yet nothing changes the US and the empire it represents seems to be able to shrug off anything. Spying now is even more intense than before Jean-Claude Junker was promoted to head the EC only weeks after LuxLeaks – it just doesn’t seem to matter to them.
It is discouraging.
As long as people feel relatively comfortable, regardless of how they’ll pay for it for the rest of their lives (eg through copious credit lines and luxuries and the like) and as long as these people don’t feel personally aggrieved and affronted by the vanishment of civil liberties in large enough numbers, it’ll probably be difficult to get people to care enough to make a difference; on the flip side, WITHOUT access to money, resources, and the basics for survival, it’s difficult to get people to feel they have the power to change things, or the strength to do what’s necessary to approach things in anything but a brute-force manner with short, sharp jabs that just make things worse. I’m not sure what the ‘sweet spot’ is but I’m sure that even if we got there economically, without the education in how to think, we’ll just be pedaling in circles while everybody claims to know how to fix things but in effect nobody really does. I don’t have the same thoughts and feelings about LuxLeaks and the Panama Papers as you do, but I do agree that most people generally don’t care. We the People need to figure out how to encourage people better (and responsibly). If we don’t we’re probably heading towards greater totalitarianism, rioting, and the collapse of the classes that actually keep the upper classes the upper classes… Only that may not even be true the way it was 100 years ago, due to outsourcing.
This will be even more interesting come December if they get their way with Rule 41 and the changes are instituted. We need to do whatever we can (legally) to prevent these changes from taking place. If we don’t we WILL be in a post-Orwellian police state (note we probably are already but at least they have to lie and skirt the truth at times if someone tries to call them on it).
What’s more, these branches of government have NO Constitutional basis for overlap; this overlap is the precise opposite of Constitutional and one of the reasons why we have more than one branch of government in the first place.
How long or how many grievances have to brought by the pen before folks decide to wield the sword? At what point do Americans write the words again “…let Facts be submitted to a candid world”
What is a fair metric? How to weigh and count grievance against alleged gov. tyranny?
I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure that even wielding the pen is considered ‘dangerous’ by current standards and bordering on (in some cases even entering, in ‘their’ minds) the region of ‘treason’. One would imagine that any attempt to wield the sword or gun wouldn’t end well for said sword or gun-wielders. If one even managed to wield it for more than a day or two before getting killed and plastered all over the news/internet as a terrorist, I’d be heavily surprised. Note I’m not advocating taking up the sword (or the gun) and not only because it’s likely to get you jailed and/or killed. The minute we stoop to doing what’s convenient for them to turn into ‘extremism’ I figure we’ve already lost. If we can’t control the narrative, how can we expect to get others to see tyranny for what it is in the first place? People always want to revert to a social mean.
If Benjamin Franklin had written his ‘anonymous letters’ in today’s day and age, I think it’s safe to say that he would have been nipped in the proverbial bud pretty quickly. I obviously don’t want the breakdown of infrastructure or society… but I suspect the first thing necessary for any ability to fight back is the ability to take the opponent by surprise. Nobody in the world has that ability in the world if the US knows you exist and wants to cut you down. Maybe that sounds a bit excessive but it’s also the point where we are at technically. I know, at least for me, that it’s a disturbing thought. Without the ability to hope for change, I don’t think people can, and without the ability to believe they have a real chance to do so effectively, I don’t think people would be willing to make any sacrifices at all out of fear. And quite honestly it’d be hard to blame them.
(NB/disclaimer: This doesn’t mean that I don’t think a lot of people, especially in the ‘Western world’, aren’t spoiled — just that even if I thought that weren’t true, I’m not sure it would really matter. And no, I’m not a ‘communist’. I do believe in the concept of luxuries and even credit. I just don’t think it should rule us and underpin our choices and decisions when those choices and decisions are unhealthy for us as human beings, individually and as a species).