Two Senators Say the NSA Is Still Feeding Us False Information
The NSA fact sheet claims: "Any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime."Even if this were true -- and Wyden and Udall are saying it's not -- it should not be good enough.  All communications obtained without a lawful warrant should be destroyed even if they are evidence of a crime, I submit, and I would even go farther to say that no information obtained by the NSA about US persons should ever be able to be used as evidence in a court of law.This is not because I want people to be able to commit crimes with impunity; it's because Federal criminal law is so far out of control that the government can find a charge to hang on anyone it doesn't like.  Also, the NSA is an arm of the DoD; as such, its job is to keep the country safe from external attackers.  If the kind of massive, invasive data collection we are reading about is necessary to do that job -- a point I am not conceding, but one that many people seem to believe -- at the very least we must make sure it is never used for any other purpose.