patrick.net

However—and this is especially troubling—“if analysts stumble across evidence that an American has committed any crime, they will send it to the Justice Department,” the Times wrote. So information that was collected without a warrant—or indeed any involvement by a court at all—for foreign intelligence purposes with little to no privacy protections, can be accessed raw and unfiltered by domestic law enforcement agencies to prosecute Americans with no involvement in threats to national security.

We had hoped for more. In November, we and other civil liberties and privacy groups sent a letter to President Obama asking him to improve transparency and accountability, especially around government surveillance, before he leaves office. This is not the transparency we were hoping for.

We asked that he declassify and release Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, shed some much-needed light on how certain foreign-facing surveillance programs are used to target Americans, and more.

Obviously, and not for the first time, we are disappointed in the Obama administration.

In his finals days in office, let the president know about your disappointment in the government surveillance infrastructure he’s bulking up before he hands the reins to Trump. Sign our petition here.