Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, wants Americans to redefine privacy. Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.Kerr’s comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.
The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil in order to protect Americans’ privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.
The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people’s private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.
In other words, “we’re not spying on you, because we’ve changed the definition of what constitutes spying”. Next up: “redefining” torture, invasion and occupation, and patriotism.
But, on the bright side, congress keeps telecoms on the hook for illegal spying:
Full House and Senate Judiciary Committee Each Pass Bills with No Amnesty for Warrantless Surveillance
Washington, D.C. - Both the full House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to keep telecommunications companies on the hook for their role in illegal government spying on millions of ordinary Americans — at least for now.
2 Comments
http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2007/11/privacy.html
That was good.