13-06-07 US: The surveillance state

WND

BETWEEN THE LINES

THE SCANDALS AND THE SURVEILLANCE STATE

Exclusive: Joseph Farah stresses solution to exploding Obama spying incidents

• The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an “ongoing daily basis.”
• The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order.
• The Obama administration acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack.
• The National Security Agency has long justified its spying powers by arguing that its charter allows surveillance on those outside of the United States, while avoiding intrusions into the private communications of American citizens. But the latest revelation of the extent of the NSA’s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitly excluded those outside the United States.
• U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.
• The FBI is unhappy that there are communications technologies it cannot intercept, and wants a new requirement that software makers and communications companies create a back door so they can listen in when they want.

If these headlines appeared over the course of a 10-year period, there would be plenty to worry about in terms of privacy rights in the United States. But, amazingly, these news stories all appeared in just one day – yesterday – in the reports of news organizations around the world.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/the-scandals-and-the-surveillance-state/#cVXri2DrYjSPyAlS.99