The Obama administration secretly won permission from a
surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security
Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to
search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases,
according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.
In addition, the court extended the length of time that the
NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six
years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which
include a recently released 2011
opinionby U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court
in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request [i.e. George Bush, a ban Obama reversed ~ blog editor]— on those kinds
of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the
search authority has been used. . . . . read the full story here.
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