FBI quietly changes its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans by Spencer Ackerman.
From the post:
The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans’ international communications that was collected by the National Security Agency, US officials have confirmed to the Guardian.
The classified revisions were accepted by the secret US 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 (Fisa), and is a provision set to expire later this year.
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Spender’s report is marred by what it can’t state:
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But the PCLOB’s new compliance report, released on Saturday, 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.

“Changes have been implemented based on PCLOB recommendations, but we cannot comment further due to classification,” said Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI.Sharon Bradford Franklin, a spokesperson for the PCLOB, said the classification prevented her from describing the rule changes in detail, but she said they move to enhance privacy. She could not say when the rules actually changed – that, too, is classified.
“They do apply additional limits” to the FBI, Franklin said.
Timothy Barrett, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, also confirmed the change to FBI minimization rules.
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We know how trustworthy government has proven itself to be, Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Afghan War Diaries, the Snowden leaks, just to hit the highlights.
Here is what Snowden said was being collected:
By National Security Agency – original image | source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26526602
So where is the danger of the FBI being limited (picking one at random) from monitoring all chats from New York state to overseas locations? That only means it has to have some cause to invade the privacy of a given individual.
Doesn’t say what cause, don’t say which individual.
What privacy for the FBI does do is conceal incompetence, waste of resources and perpetuate a lack of effective outside oversight over the FBI.
Otherwise the FBI would not have to recruiting the mentally ill to carry out terrorist preparations at the behest of the FBI. They would have real, non-FBI sponsored terrorists to arrest.
Now there’s a category for terrorists: non-FBI sponsored terrorists.
Is anyone doing data mining on FBI “terrorist” arrests?