Friday, February 28, 2020

Controversial NSA Phone Surveillance Program Led To Exactly Zero Arrests

In yet more absurdity and confirmation that Edward Snowden was never an "Enemy of the state" - as top intelligence officials and some congressional leaders have charged for years - it's been revealed that the latest National Security Agency program to analyze logs of phone calls and text messages made by Americans was an utter failure and waste, yielding exactly zero arrests from 2015 to 2019, despite having swept up some trillion US phone records.

It was one among many broader controversial NSA programs to sweep up and analyze communications, which critics say routinely violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The NSA can still gather phone logs on Americans through other means of course, relying on other invasive programs, likely some of which still remain unknown and highly classified.

The low success rate and high cost support the NSA's decision to shut off the program in 2019.

Politicians must now decide whether to allow the expiration of the legislation that makes the program possible.

The Trump administration is reportedly seeking to extend the life of the program, in order to provide the government's top signals intelligence spy agency with a future option to initiate the program if deemed necessary.

Important new report on the NSA program that gathered on the order of a trillion US phone records.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/controversial-nsa-phone-surveillance-program-led-exactly-zero-arrests

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