President Obama claims the NSA has never abused its authority. That's false

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/31/nsa-powers-have-been-abused

The facts that we know so far – from Fisa court documents to LOVEINT – show that the NSA has overstepped its powers

President Obama claims the NSA has never abused its authority. That's false
Trevor Timm
Tuesday 31 December 2013 10.40 EST

Time and again since the world learned the extent of what the NSA was doing, government officials have defended the controversial mass surveillance programs by falling back on one talking point: the NSA programs may be all-powerful, but they have never been abused.

President Obama continually evokes the phase when defending the NSA in public. In his end-of-year press conference, he reiterated, "There continues not to be evidence that the [metadata surveillance] program had been abused". Former NSA chief Michael Hayden says this almost weekly, and former CIA deputy director and NSA review panel member Mike Morrell said it again just before Christmas. This mantra is likely to be repeated often in 2014 as Obama is set to address the nation on government surveillance, and Congress and the president debate whether any reforms are necessary.

There's only one problem: it's not true.

We don't have to look further than the Fisa court opinions that have been released in the past few months (thanks to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union). One of the opinions from 2009 deals directly with the phone metadata surveillance program that has caused so much controversy – the same program a Washington DC district court recently ruled is likely unconstitutional (a federal court in New York just reached the opposite conclusion.)