Health & Fitness
Government decided it can use your private data without warrant
More and more is being revealed about what the government tracks about you and what powers they give themselves.
The NSA spying scandal continues to get worse as more information comes out to show that the size and the scope of this activity is even larger than first known. And remember, this is a program which the administration says is "completely transparent". Even though only a handful of political elites knew about it and it only came to light after exposed by a whistle blower.
A FISA court is one that was set up to review requests from the government for legal issues related to security issues. It is only a review by a judge of a request. The government can "shop around" to find a judge who will approve the kind of request that they want approved. There is no representative of the people there, only the government. The judge can reject the request, but that happens very rarely. Slightly less rare is that the court modifies the request. Almost exclusively the requests are approved as is. Well, a FISA court approved the ability to give the government the power for a full year to essentially do whatever they want. They no longer are required to go to a judge for every individual under investigation. It removes the burden of proof from the government to show that they have reasonable suspicion of an individual, the government can just determine someone is a potential threat and they can start spying. Innocent until proven guilty? Not anymore.
They can also use domestic data collected on the average American without a warrant. They've said they don't actively read every email, and they likely don't. But they collect the data so that if they decide they need to, they have collected all that information about you already, so they can go back and build a case against you with data they'd collected but never used whenever they decide you are a potential threat.
This is a violation of our basic civil rights.
This is also not a new problem.
These people are lying to Congress and lying to you about the extent and the effectiveness of the program. They are violating your rights.
Do you care?