The Washington Post has a new story up: Obama administration had restrictions on the NSA reversed in 2011.
The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.
In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.
The story goes on to explain how the Obama administration secretly appealed the ban on warrantless searches to allow the NSA to search the database at will, and alludes to Sen. Wyden's and Sen. Udall's cryptic warnings being related to this action.
Meanwhile, Greenwald says that he's breaking a story Sunday night and hints that it will include proof of the NSA's spying on behalf of U.S. corporate interests.
If anyone had been hoping that the call to war against Syria would provide a distraction from the NSA scandals, they're gonna be disappointed this week.