{"id":16525,"date":"2012-09-28T08:11:05","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T16:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16525"},"modified":"2012-09-28T08:11:05","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T16:11:05","slug":"just-released-documents-show-huge-increase-in-warrantless-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/28\/just-released-documents-show-huge-increase-in-warrantless-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Just-Released Documents Show ‘Huge Increase’ in Warrantless Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Obama administration has fought tooth and nail<\/a> to keep the details<\/a> of its surveillance activities hidden from the public. For years it has insisted that its snooping on Americans’ phone and email communications fell perfectly within the law (that is, the extremely broad and invasive FISA Amendments Act,\u00a0which\u00a0authorizes warrantless surveillance of Americans\u2019 international communications, checked only by a secretive\u00a0Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that doesn\u2019t make it\u2019s activities and procedures available to the public.) Despite repeated demands by civil liberties groups, the administration refused to disclose how many times they gathered intelligence about American citizens.<\/p>\n

But now, the ACLU, “after months of litigation,” has been provided with some details. And it doesn’t look good<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ACLU<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Justice Department\u00a0documents\u00a0<\/a>released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans\u2019 electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.<\/p>\n

The documents, handed over by the government only after months of\u00a0litigation<\/a>, are the attorney general\u2019s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of \u201cpen register\u201d and \u201ctrap and trace\u201d surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government\u2019s surveillance power.\u00a0 (Our originalFreedom of Information Act request<\/a>\u00a0and our legal\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0are online.)<\/p>\n

Pen register and trap and trace devices are powerfully invasive\u00a0surveillance tools<\/a>\u00a0that were,\u00a0twenty years ago<\/a>, physical devices that attached to telephone lines in order to covertly record the incoming and outgoing numbers dialed. Today, no special equipment is required to record this information, as interception capabilities are built into phone companies\u2019 call-routing hardware.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This news will be completely ignored by the network news outlets, so voters will by and large know nothing about it. It will not inform people’s voting decisions. But even if it did, the question again arises, as it was so elegantly put<\/a> by The Atlantic<\/em>‘s Conor Friedersdorf earlier this week, how much “evil” are lesser evil Obama voters willing to accept?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Obama administration has fought tooth and nail to keep the details of its surveillance activities hidden from the public. For years it has insisted that its snooping on Americans’ phone and email communications fell perfectly within the law (that is, the extremely broad and invasive FISA Amendments Act,\u00a0which\u00a0authorizes warrantless surveillance of Americans\u2019 international communications, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16525"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16918,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions\/16918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16525"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}