The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Trove of Delicately Balanced Redacted Disclosures
Rex Latchford here with another DayPage…
In the ever-growing octopus of the Spy Scandal unleashed by Edward Snowden that has uncovered the Total Surveillance State, the Obama administration released hundreds of pages of newly declassified documents related to the NSA late Monday. This included an 87 page ruling in which the FISA court first approved a program to track American’s emails during the Bush administration. The documents were released in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, which are despised by most administrations… so… in reality…
Is this a long-overdue effort of the Obama administration to point the spy finger at the Bush administration? That would be… instead of trying to carry on and embellish the Bush era spying?
The documents about the FISA ruling were just one of the trove of documents.
Documents released by Edward Snowden demonstrate that it IS possible to shut down the obsessive spying on citizens by the government. The Bush administration temporarily shut down its bulk collection of citizens email after Justice Department lawyers raised legal concerns in March 2004. But then, email collection resumed.
James Clapper, director of National Intelligence and infamous for baldly lying to congress about the extent of surveillance of US citizens, said that the new releases had been made – with extensive redaction – in response to a request by President Obama.
At first glance, the documents as a whole reflect confusion and conflict within the domestic spying community over the extent of spying appropriate and how it should be carried out. It’s good to know that there was some questioning going on, but obviously these concerns lost out to the desire for “total information awareness”.
The full scope and details will require the collective efforts of the Third Estate to parse and distill, so we can expect a steady stream of goodies to result. Could this be a disinformation effort to quote “balance” unquote Snowden disclosures against what the Administration’s domestic spy apparatus would like us to believe? Stay tuned!
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