Secret court approves NSA request to hoover your data again

NSA is back at its old tricks.

A secret government court has approved an order for mass phone surveillance that could sweep up the phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans. The order was approved on December 31 and grants the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to spy on all Americans.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - A court order was made public this week on a website run by the NSA. The order authorizes the agency to hoover up mass quantities of phone data, known as "metadata." The order acknowledges that the request for data meets the standard of the USA Freedom Act passed by Congress last year to regulate domestic spying. As with most laws, it does the opposite of what it says on the label.

The key difference in the new law is that the NSA must specify what "targeted information" it seeks in a set of metadata, before it can begin collection.

The secret court is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The court is secretive, and many have criticized it for serving as a rubber stamp for the NSA. Allegedly the court has previously denied some NSA requests, while approving most. Americans don't know much about the court because it is inherently secretive. The order was signed by Chief Judge Thomas Hogan.

In his opinion, Judge Hogan stated that he believes the government is seeking "the ongoing daily production of detailed call records relating to an authorized international terrorism investigation.  He offered no details of the investigation in his opinion.

The agency is allowed to collect data from overseas calls, but often collects information on American citizens, which many claim violates the Fifth Amendment which protects citizens from illegal searches.

The new law supposedly requires the government to delete data after six months unless specific evidence of a crime is evident.

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