Who could have foreseen?: Spying

Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.
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As part of that investigation, a senior F.B.I. agent recently came forward with what the inspector general’s office described as accusations of “significant misconduct” in the surveillance program, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Those accusations are said to involve whether the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism.

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Hey Congress and Justice Department, give a shit yet? A member of Congress was getting spied on illegally, surely that's enough to make you stand up and take notice. It wasn't just one of the random faceless millions getting their Constitutional rights violated, it was our precious privileged elected betters suffering the indignity. Surely this will spur some action, enforcement of law, or at least a stern talking to, right? No? Fine, we'll just wait for Spain to get around to fixing it.

It's hard to even find the anger/disgust any more, since this was such an obvious, foreseeable, and predictable outcome. The whole purpose of that new FISA law all our buddies in Congress passed was to completely gut FISA and provide legal cover for everyone doing it, so who's really surprised that a lack of oversight and enforcement resulted in "overcollection." Which is just a fancy word for "extensive massive rights violations of the American public". But hey, I'm sure these abuses were just a few bad apples who didn't....oh, it says abuses were "significant and systemic".

But hey, I'm sure everything is all right now and just pointing out that these things happened and doing nothing to correct the total gutting of FISA that allowed this will mean that this sort of thing will never ever ever happen again. Hey, the Obama JD says everything is alright and they totally fixed things and there's no need to worry. Which is so relaxing, just like it was so relaxing to hear then Senator Obama tell us, back when it was up for vote, that the new FISA law would strengthen civil liberties protection and improve oversight. That worked out so well, I totally believe him this time.