Obama Gave NSA Special Powers To ‘Take Down Trump’

Fact checked
Barack Obama granted NSA special powers to 'take down Trump' in the last days of his presidency

Former President Barack Obama granted the NSA special powers shortly before leaving office that would ensure the agency could “take down Trump”.

According to a January story in the New York Times, Obama mysteriously expanded the National Security Agency’s powers to intercept personal communications of the President – something he had never been victim of himself:

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Pjmedia.com reports:

One of the central questions behind the Mike Flynn flap that should have been asked but largely wasn’t is: who was wiretapping the general? The answer, we know now, was the National Security Agency, formerly known as No Such Agency, the nation’s foremost signals-intelligence (SIGINT) collection department.

Once compartmentalized to avoid injuring private citizens caught up in the net of the Black Widow (as we all are already) and her technological successors, the NSA was suddenly handed greater latitude in what it could share with other, perhaps more politicized bodies of the intelligence community. Why?

Let’s call the roster of the bad guys:

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.

Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.

Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.

“This is not expanding the substantive ability of law enforcement to get access to signals intelligence,” said Robert S. Litt, the general counsel to Mr. Clapper. “It is simply widening the aperture for a larger number of analysts, who will be bound by the existing rules.”

Throwing the BS flag on this one. “Widening the aperture,” my old granny. One of the things about the IC is that “existing rules” are made to be broken whenever one of its unaccountable minions feels like it; these are people who lie and cheat for a living. And the genius of the Democrats — something for the GOP to think about next time — is that they were able to leverage the transition in order to change as many rules and embed as many apparatchiks as possible before formally turning over the reins to the new kids.

But Patrick Toomey, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the move an erosion of rules intended to protect the privacy of Americans when their messages are caught by the N.S.A.’s powerful global collection methods. He noted that domestic internet data was often routed or stored abroad, where it may get vacuumed up without court oversight.

“Rather than dramatically expanding government access to so much personal data, we need much stronger rules to protect the privacy of Americans,” Mr. Toomey said. “Seventeen different government agencies shouldn’t be rooting through Americans’ emails with family members, friends and colleagues, all without ever obtaining a warrant.”

Correct. But the Fourth Amendment went out the barn door along with all the pretty horses long ago. Google and Facebook and Amazon know more about you than the CIA or FBI ever used to. And most of the personal information is provided by… you. Think about that, the next time you “check in,” post pictures of your loved ones and talk about your travel plans.

15 Comments

  1. To sit back and watch this is like movie of twists and turns with a monster lurking around every corner it is so pathetic that Mr O did not give the same level of respect that he received when he took office it is like O did double cross at every turn Trump did say he never knew how vivacious and how low this game really is it is sickening that the President of U.S is to be treated in this way

  2. The exposing of this deeply embedded apparatus in the bloated 22 million strong army of fed level leaches is quite the eye opener. I always thought it was bad but this kicks it up few floors
    They will do whatever is necessary to get their check every week, the ones who make it possible be damned.
    Trump has a lot ahead of him. I pray he can do this.

  3. Got an email from the DNC today suggesting Trump is involved with Russia. So this is what they have been pushing now for weeks to embed that in American’s minds, since all their other efforts have failed. And there’s no way to defend against it, since these intelligence agencies can say anything they want and are beholden to no-one apparently.

    And you a have couple GOP Rino senators that will go along in the nutcase McCain and his pal, Graham and probably Mike Lee as well.

    • Aren’t the great majority of republicans RINOs anyway? The only difference between the two parties is how they are perceived by the public via the mainstream media and party propaganda. Behind closed doors they are quite comfy with one another and have been building the new world order together for decades. The real conservatives can be counted on one’s fingers.

    • russia is not the enemy here…it is obama, clinton and the demo-cratcs…these are the real enemy, they are hoping and counting the ways to break this president…this will never happen….watch….president trump should do a major do-over on his DHS people…CIA people…..and get those that he can trust…..but president trump should go after Soros first..put these as*hole in jail …and throw away the key

  4. I feel sorry for the Trump worshippers they do not know what conspiracy theory invent to justify that his idol Trump is and always have been trash

    hahahaahahahahah

  5. I give Trump a one in ten chance of accomplishing anything of substance in his term. The Crown of London deep state will has it’s druthers.
    Andrew Jackson’s America was lost in 1913. Done.

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