Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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USA Today (6/3/15) had a five-column headline across the top of its front page:
NSA Data Collection Ended
That would be odd, since the National Security Agency exists to collect data; it’s unlikely that a $10 billion agency would simply stop everything it was doing.
What the headline means to say is that the NSA has ended what the story calls its “controversial bulk collection of the phone data of millions of Americans who have no ties to terrorism.” But that’s not really true either. For one thing, while the headline says that the phone data collection program has ended, the vote the headline is reporting actually restarted it. While the NSA says it ended the collection of bulk metadata at the end of May in accordance with a sunset provision in the original Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act authorizes the the agency to begin collecting it again over what USA Today calls a six-month “wind down” period “to give the NSA and phone companies…time to switch over the data collection to the phone companies.”
And that points to a bigger problem with declaring that the NSA’s data collection has “ended”: The same data will still be collected, only it will be held in phone company computers rather than the NSA’s computers. The NSA will still have access to the data, only having to get an OK from the FISA court–a notorious rubberstamp that operates in secret. As NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe told FAIR, “It’s more of a psychological maneuver to make us all feel good than a true constraint.”
The Mass Surveillance of US Public Continues as USA Today Declares It Ended FAIR
None of it went away and nobody is going to fight it as long as the news headlines keep telling people it's a wrap.
NSA Data Collection Ended
That would be odd, since the National Security Agency exists to collect data; it’s unlikely that a $10 billion agency would simply stop everything it was doing.
What the headline means to say is that the NSA has ended what the story calls its “controversial bulk collection of the phone data of millions of Americans who have no ties to terrorism.” But that’s not really true either. For one thing, while the headline says that the phone data collection program has ended, the vote the headline is reporting actually restarted it. While the NSA says it ended the collection of bulk metadata at the end of May in accordance with a sunset provision in the original Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act authorizes the the agency to begin collecting it again over what USA Today calls a six-month “wind down” period “to give the NSA and phone companies…time to switch over the data collection to the phone companies.”
And that points to a bigger problem with declaring that the NSA’s data collection has “ended”: The same data will still be collected, only it will be held in phone company computers rather than the NSA’s computers. The NSA will still have access to the data, only having to get an OK from the FISA court–a notorious rubberstamp that operates in secret. As NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe told FAIR, “It’s more of a psychological maneuver to make us all feel good than a true constraint.”
The Mass Surveillance of US Public Continues as USA Today Declares It Ended FAIR
None of it went away and nobody is going to fight it as long as the news headlines keep telling people it's a wrap.
