Posted on 08/08/2013 1:36:04 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
White House: NSA monitors ‘very small percentage’ of Web traffic By Justin Sink - 08/08/13 02:43 PM ET
White House press secretary Jay Carney defended National Security Agency programs on Thursday, saying they "examine only a very small percentage" of the world’s Internet traffic.
Carney insisted that emails sent by ordinary Americans overseas were "not being read" and that NSA was only collecting information it was "explicitly authorized" to collect.
"And while NSA analysts examine only a very small percentage of the world's traffic, if communications of U.S. persons are incidentally collected, the agency must follow minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of U.S. persons," he said at his daily press briefing.
Carney was questioned about the administration’s surveillance activities in light of a New York Times report on Thursday that said the NSA had been "searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans' emails and text communications" without a warrant.
The Times reported the NSA’s surveillance is more extensive than previously known, with officials “casting a far wider net for people who cite information” linked to foreigners who are under investigation.
Carney said the NSA targets information only on "terrorist threats or potential terrorist threats emanating from foreign persons and foreign areas," and added that safeguards were in place to protect privacy.
"These procedures require NSA to minimize the acquisition processing, retention and dissemination of information of or concerning U.S. persons," Carney said. "The purpose of the program is to investigate and potentially prevent terrorist threats emanating from foreign sources.”
The top-secret surveillance programs have come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and civil rights advocates after their revelation earlier this year by former Defense contractor Edward Snowden.
Last week, President Obama met with some of the program's most vocal congressional critics at the White House and told them he was open to changing the system.
The president was also questioned about the NSA surveillance during a visit on Tuesday to NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” He defended the programs as providing “useful” information and said the agency does not target U.S. citizens.
“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama said. “What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack.”
Obama called the surveillance programs “a critical component to counterterrorism,” but acknowledged that they’ve “raised a lot of questions for people.”
“What I've said before, you know, and I want to make sure I repeat ... is we should be skeptical about the potential encroachments on privacy. None of the revelations show that the government has actually abused these powers, but they are pretty significant powers,” he said.
Define "ordinary Americans overseas"? How do you know they are ordinary?
Now we know this REALLY means they monitor ALL web traffic.
Only the conservative American citizen part.
Very small means everything that doesn’t include anything to or from a mosque, any traffic to, from or within a hostile (is there any other kind) muslim country, any traffic between known terrorists, if they are muslim, and anyone within direct, secondary or tertiary contact (three hops) of a democrat politician...
The fact that he has to keep going there shows they are still feeling the heat. Excellent!
” White House: NSA monitors ‘very small percentage’ of Web traffic “
1) conservatives
2) gun owners
3) christians
4) Tea party
One Bit or one Byte is too much. These Marxists have pushed the envelope too far and must be stopped.
So what? They are gathering it all. They monitor anyone who draws their attention - and they’ll have their history. That comment means nothing.
was Jay Carney laughing when he said that ?
The NSA has it’s own very specific lexicon; often the critic of the NSA THINK he understands what they’re saying but in fact DOES NOT:
LOTS of words used at NSA do not mean the same thing outside the NSA —a fact they defty exploit when issuing these denials:
Take the word, “examine” —the NSA surveillance denier does not mean your call was not intercepted. He does not mean your call was not stored. He does not mean your call was not transcribed. He does not mean the transcribed call was not run through a key-word screen:
He means that after ALLLLLL that stuff was done (and a whole bunch of other stuff) was done to your call that no HUMAN BEING also read it.
AND THERE ARE LOTS OF OTHER WEASEL WORDS THEY EXPLOIT.
Even words like, “store” or “analyze” that you THINK you understand do NOT carry the same meaning inside NSA.
We are often literally NOT SPEAKING THE SAME LANGUAGE as NSA and in order to render a meaningful critique we have to UNDERSTAND that.
Who cares what they “monitor”? What do they collect?
Bet they monitor FR.
Everything.
That’s the issue herein. They’re collecting everything in a huge sniffer operation, recording it on disc and then they’re using a query system to pull up everything done by an individual or individual*s* who might be on a warrant at a later time.
Ummm...so you have a domestic spying program.
Difference between collect and monitor.
Of course they monitor a small percentage. who would have time to examine it all. But they shouldn’t be collecting on us all.
If they monitor everything on the internet except porn then they would be monitoring a very small percentage of web traffic.
Of course, they are probably monitoring porn too.
It’s also the difference between physically monitoring and computerized monitoring.
The computers are searching everybody’s communications for keywords. While they are only physically monitoring people whom they wish to monitor.
I feel sooo much better now.
If the American press was doing its job they would set up a sting operation to test just what the NSA is snooping on.
Other nation states do this all the time to assess the monitoring and decryption abilities of their adversaries. They know exactly what is being monitored by the NSA... it’s only the average citizen that is in the dark.
For the US press it would involve a large group of disparate individuals passing faux messages of a suspicious nature using email and social networks. If they then observe any actions being taken that show that the messages had been monitored they can report that fact.
NSA: “Yes we scan!”
By saying “small percentage”, why am I thinking that means near 100%?
Maybe “a hundred” is very small, when compared to billions and trillions.
It’s bland statements like this that re-enforce my habit of not offering my solutions to Democrat crimes.
In realtime, that is.
The rest is as needed.
It’s called “Obama Math”. /s
So was it a "minimization procedure" that sent the FBI to the house where a wife searched for "pressure cookers" while the husband was looking for "backpacks"?
It means they filter out the porn before it goes to the main digester unit.
It all depends on what the definition of is is.
Yes we do.
The "pressure cooker" / "backpack" FBI raid proves it.
We don’t want much. Just let us wet our beaks/
If the government only monitored a small amount of web traffic, then I am the winner of the Powerball jackpot last night.
Who wants to volunteer to check it out by posting something you KNOW you shouldn’t post?
Not me! That’s why I asked if anyone wants to volunteer.
WAY less than 99.9999% I’m sure.
Regardless of what they use, this whole operation is a violation of the Fourth Amendment!
If his mouth is moving, he’s lying.
“Jay Carney “
I don’t believe anything this a$$-kissing sycophant says.
It’s easy. Watch!
NSA Yemen bomb chocolate Hello Kitty azalea New York City O’hare paper mache H1N1 dog hair staple sarin Tony Bourdain underwear fireplace test scores U235 sewer gas inter-office memo kaffir PBUH
OK. 10, 9, 8, .......
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