Charlie Savage reports:
In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.
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.
Read more on the New York Times.
So why is this happening as Obama leaves office? If it is a good idea now, why wasn’t it a good idea last year or the year before? Did he just fear public backlash against him for eroding our privacy more? Or is he somehow hoping that this new increased sharing will be used against Trump and his associates and connections?
What’s really going on here?