The Fundamentals of US Surveillance: What Edward Snowden Never Told Us?
However, it appears that Snowden may have missed a pivotal part of the US surveillance program. And in stating that the “nobody” is not listening to our calls, President Obama may have been fudging quite a bit.
In fact, Great Britain maintains a “listening post” at NSA HQ. The laws restricting live wiretaps do not apply to foreign countries and thus this listening post is not subject to US law. In other words, the restrictions upon wiretaps, etc. do not apply to the British listening post. So when Great Britain hands over the recordings to the NSA, technically speaking, a law is not being broken and technically speaking, the US is not eavesdropping on our each and every call.
It is Great Britain which is doing the eavesdropping and turning over these records to US intelligence.
According to John Loftus, formerly an attorney with the Department of Justice and author of a number of books concerning US intelligence activities, back in the late seventies the USDOJ issued a memorandum proposing an amendment to FISA. Loftus, who recalls seeing the memo, stated in conversation this week that the DOJ proposed inserting the words “by the NSA” into the FISA law so the scope of the law would only restrict surveillance by the NSA, not by the British. Any subsequent sharing of the data culled through the listening posts was strictly outside the arena of FISA.
First appeared:http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/19/the-fundamentals-of-us-surveillance-what-edward-snowden-never-told-us/
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