Barely a week before he leaves office, U. S. President Barack Obama’s administration has authorized controversial new legislation that grants America’s 16 intelligence organizations access to raw communications data from the NSA’s surveillance efforts.
The New York Times reported that on January 3 Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed new regulations that permit the 16 divisions — which include the army, navy, coastguard, CIA and FBI — access to “raw signals intelligence information.” In the past, information passed on by the NSA was filtered so that an agency would only receive information deemed relevant to their request for data. Now, they will gain access to the full content stash brought in by the NSA’s surveillance dragnet, assuming that their request is accepted.
