Barely a week before he leaves office, U. S. President Barack Obama\u2019s administration has authorized controversial new legislation that grants America\u2019s 16 intelligence organizations access to raw communications data from the NSA\u2019s surveillance efforts.
The New York Times reported that on January 3 Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed new regulations that permit the 16 divisions \u2014 which include the army, navy, coastguard, CIA and FBI \u2014 access to \u201craw signals intelligence information.\u201d 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\u2019s surveillance dragnet, assuming that their request is accepted.
Analysts can later apply filters to focus on the more pertinent data, but the government has enacted this change to give its analysts access to more atoms of data. The idea being that they may find useful information that they would otherwise not have gotten.
The legislation marks a major step back for the privacy of American people, millions of whose phone, email and other communications records are picked up by the NSA as so-called \u2018incidental data.\u2019 Those raw details can now be perused by 16 further intelligence divisions beyond the NSA, all without a warrant.
Consider this point from the EFF :
In the wake of the Snowden disclosures, President Obama enacted reform that applied some limits to the NSA\u2019s activities \u2014 including restrictions on data capture for non-US citizens and rules for storing incidental data \u2014 but this revelation marks a step back on any efforts to address the privacy of individuals. That\u2019s particularly troubling given the uncertainty around how Obama\u2019s successor, President Elect Donald Trump, will utilize America\u2019s intelligence apparatus.<\/p>\n