One of the central concerns of American intelligence gathering is that they can cut a wide swath. Anything the government happens to find on anybody as it watches supposed threats to our country, even if it’s totally innocent, it can keep, which is why the NSA was allegedly sharing your sexts around the office. And the Obama administration has decided in its closing days that really, why should sharing data be limited to just the NSA? Everybody can come in and poke around!
The New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration has relaxed rules about sharing raw signals intelligence with other American agencies. Before, the NSA had to filter data it shared, removing innocent people and redacting names and unneeded personal information. But now officials can request access to the NSA’s raw feed, and the NSA will make the call whether or not the severity of the case, and the potential impact on their fellow Americans, warrants that access.
This decision has both negative and positive effects. On the positive side, it takes the burden of finding data relevant to other agencies off the NSA’s hands, so if there’s a valuable nugget of information they need that the NSA didn’t notice, it’ll be spotted. On the other hand, well, we all know what happened the last time the NSA got to run around hoovering up our data with glee, and now they get to share it with anybody they feel like? Maybe consider doing any dirty talk in person.
(via New York Times)