So they even lie to their own secret court? I guess Congress should feel better about Clapper’s perj

[kpete]

FISA Court Ruled NSA Program Unconstitutional, Said NSA Misled Them
By: DSWright Thursday August 22, 2013 6:00 am


The initial defense of the NSA spying program echoed by everyone from Congress to the agency heads to the White House was that the program was “legal.” But newly declassified material shows that even the secret court stacked with Chief Justice Roberts’ judges recognized the NSA was conducting a domestic spying program when the NSA gathered thousands of Americans’ emails.

For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gathered-thousands-of-americans-e-mails-before-court-struck-down-program/2013/08/21/146ba4b6-0a90-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html

The FISA court opinion demonstrates at least that we did have a domestic spying program. And no, once again, that is not Constitutional.

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.

“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/162016974/FISA-court-opinion-with-exemptions
MORE:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/08/22/fisa-court-ruled-nsa-program-unconstitutional-said-nsa-misled-them/

[geckosfeet]

1. Why would anyone expect a bunch of people whose livelihood depends on secrecy

and living in the shadows to tell the truth in public?

I firmly believe that these security agencies need to reigned way way in with new full disclosure requirements. Not sure who needs all the info but we are paying taxes for these agencies to do their work ostensibly protecting US interests I think we (through appropriate representation) should have some input into what and how they do their work.

[Skidmore]

2. Perhaps the Congress should feel shame about

not making certain that the government oversight has not been properly conducted under them.

[JoePhilly]

3. So the scary secret, rubber stamp court ...

wrote an opinion back in 2011, long before the recent leaks, calling the NSA out, and forcing them to change their procedures. And apparently, they changed the procedures.

Why?

Why would the rubber stamp issue such a ruling?

Why not simply rubber stamp the exiting procedure?

The other thing that caught my attention was this ...

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.

What it made me wonder is how many electronic communications occur each day. 56,000 a year seems like a large number. So I searched on Google looking for how many emails are sent in a day.

The numbers I found varied some ... but they are huge. The estimates for emails per day ranged from 144 Billion, to 294 Billion per day. Not per year, per day.

To be sure, 56,000 is still way too many a year, but compared to the number of emails sent a day, its nothing. And I didn't include phone calls. Add those and 56,000 becomes even smaller in comparison.

[BlueStreak]

4. What evidence do you have that the NSA stopped operating Unconstitutionally?