Should We Believe The NSA About Stopping Its Unconstitutional “About Searches”?

By Catherine J. Frompovich

Recently, the NSA announced it no longer will conduct “about searches” as part of its Upstream Surveillance.  That sounds great, but can we really believe them.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who has filed lawsuits against NSA regarding the unconstitutional and warrantless searches it conducts, NSA’s statement is a win in the fight against surveillance, but more reforms still are needed.

So really, what freedom prize did citizens win?  Maybe it can be found in the parsing of words, so let’s go down what could end up being a semantics rabbit hole?

NSA no longer will conduct “about” searches of the full content of Internet communications, per the EFF’s 718th issue (May 19, 2017) of its newsletter “EFFector.” Okay, but there seems to be a technical ‘glitch’ or, as some would say, a “fly in the ointment.”   The Effector, I think, describes what I’m talking about when it says:

“About” searches are searches of online communications—including to and from innocent Americans—that the NSA runs after it intercepts and copies communications directly from the high-capacity cables that carry Internet traffic as a part of its Upstream program. The U.S. government has claimed these warrantless searches of Americans’ email are allowed under Section 702, enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

While the NSA will continue to look through the “to” and “from” fields of communication to see if they contain any identifiers that the agency has determined are connected to foreign intelligence targets, they will no longer look through the body of those communications to see if they mention—or are “about”—these identifiers. Not only did the NSA stop these searches, the agency said it would delete the “vast majority” of the information it collected under Section 702 “to further protect the privacy of U.S. person communications.”

[CJF emphasis]

Even though the above information may be comforting to hear, can we believe the NSA? I ask.  To my way of thinking, a “leopard can’t change its spots,” so how can we expect the premiere federal government surveillance agency to stop surveilling U.S. citizens?  Their very ‘nature’ won’t allow them; they can’t and won’t, I offer.  Remember, it’s part of the FISA Amendments Act, even though that act contradicts and contravenes the U.S. Constitution, which somehow seems to be disregarded more and more, but tilted in favor of political left wing, politically-correct socialist memes, in my opinion.

However, the EFF is more optimistic and upbeat about the win from NSA when it says,

The NSA’s willingness to give up what it has described as a crucial tool as well as go back and delete communications it has already collected was a welcome but somewhat shocking development.

How can NSA’s continuing to surveil the “to” and “from” fields of all communications be considered a win?  What am I missing in the semantics game jockeying?  However, to EFF’s credit, it is suing the NSA (Jewel v. NSA) [1] “over ‘about’ searches and other privacy-invasive aspects of Upstream surveillance under Section 702,” so let’s see what the courts decide in the next move on the semantics game board.

The EFF is an activist-like organization, which I admire and agree with their mission.  They ask everyone to contact their respective members of Congress https://www.congress.gov/contact-us and tell them to “protect constituents’ privacy and let warrantless Upstream surveillance lapse when Section 702 sunsets at the end of the year.”

To learn more about EFF, a non-profit organization working to defend and protect our online rights to privacy and civil liberties in the digital world, you may want to access their website.  Here’s what I like about them, as published on their newsletter:

“Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged.”

Reference:

[1] https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.

Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)

Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities ©2016 Catherine J Frompovich is now available


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7 Comments on "Should We Believe The NSA About Stopping Its Unconstitutional “About Searches”?"

  1. Nope

  2. Grace by Faith on yt | May 19, 2017 at 11:32 am |

    Not only should we not trust the government, we should realize all they do is lie to us and their authority over us is one big fraud. Just a few good quotes about not trusting the government: “Trust is a two-way street. If your government does not trust you, how can you trust your government?” Bruce Montague

    “There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” John Adams

    And he’s no hero, in fact, he’s one of them, but Ronald Reagan wrote, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”

    I’d sooner stick a porcupine up my bum tail first than trust anything these psychopaths say or do.

  3. Ditto, nope. Thank you Catherine for keeping us informed about current events. I do not trust any governmental agency for that matter especially nsa. These federal agencies are well entrenched and are the mechanism to oppress, extort and spy on American citizens.

  4. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is outstanding in identifying security and freedom in the telecom realm we live in. It should be more than apparent that the national security state, military and intelligence apparatus has never worked for freedom or the common man, but, as Smedley Butler has stated in his book “War is a Racket” is a form of racketeering for invested interests that own and run our country since it’s inception. The Platonic noble lie has been run perpetually by those that own and run this country and send our young men and women to die for a special interest that is the worst interest of mankind. Since Alexander Hamilton sold the US as collateral for the corporation of the Bank of North America and the First Bank of the United States, Daniel Shays’s rebellion, Whiskey rebellion and others, the common person has been used. The US helped with the Jacobin revolution to destroy the French monarchy, financed the Bolsheviks (through Jacob Schiff and others) who not only wiped out the Russian monarchy but tens of millions of Russians per Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and then slaughtered millions of Ukrainians (Holodomor), Poles (war from 1918-1921 and Katyn Forest Massacre), financed and collaborated the NAZIs to quite literally incinerate the German people and the murder millions of German soldiers after the war in the Eisenhower death camps along the Rhine per the Morganthau plan (dead men tell no tails), Willam Donovan then went on to run the Committe for a United Europe with the Paneuropeans(.org) that subverted Germany from within as the whole war was planned (also read H. G. Wells “The Shape of Thing to Come” written in 1933 that identifies the use of the Danzig corridor in wiping out the German people just as Theodore Kaufman wrote in “German Must Perish”).

    John F Kennedy wanted to dismantle the CIA, let the US have control over it’s money (See the film where the treasury agents that make up the Secret Service were called off the Lincoln in Dallas), identify Israel special interests as a foreign agent who were also involved in nuclear weapons manufacturing, and his speech of secret societies should be viewed by everyone, from American University as well as the Newspaper publishers.

    The NSA should not exist, nor the National Security State as it hides a myriad of historical atrocities to save the current state and business as usual. The FBI was created to put down dissent of WWI and has rarely acted in the protection of the people just as drug trafficking starts with special ops over seas, child trafficking is another racket they and the CIA have been involved in, arms trafficking (fast and furious to several incidents including the Siverado Savings and Loan, BCCI and others. The CIA is an outgrowth of the OSS which was a sick as the NKVD/Cheka in WWII.

    If this is to be cleaned up, an effort must be made to expose the truth of our past. Those that own the publishing companies, higher education, text book “manufacturing”, MSM, the gatekeeping websites and committees, think tanks, international affairs groups, military, intelligence alphabet soup, phony economics and policy makers… are known. It is the people’s responsibility for direct the path for our children and several generations after them.

    • Excellent, detailed commentary Madrino…Too many are dumbed down and or apathetic to get involved with saving our freedoms from the Totalitarian New World Order, Bankster, Eugenics, inbred, pedophile crew. Every day Earth is being sprayed with toxic chemicals and probably a lethal virus soon. Geo-Engineering Chemtrails are slow killing the planet. It’s another eugenics tool as is War, abortion, GMO, vaccines, radiation.

  5. Our Govt. did 9-11 to create this freedom robbing, Orwellian, I Spy agency, TSA and Homeland Security. The drug running..Thugs R Us , Murder Inc. CIA crew is an early 50’s New World Order assassin agency. The Dead Kennedys are some of their hits.

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