In his press conference on Friday, President Obama described the massive collection of phone and digital records as "two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress". But Congress has never specifically authorized these programs, and the Patriot Act was never intended to allow the daily spying the Obama administration is conducting.

This abuse of the Patriot Act must end | Jim Sensenbrenner | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

In the wake of the court ruling last March, the government cannot continue simply to follow rulings by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the merits of an asylum claimant’s case, as it has always done until now.

The Court of Final Appeal ruled that the government must independently determine the validity of asylum claims, but the authorities have devised no system for doing so. Legislation setting up such a system would take “months if not years,” says Young, and any administrative plan the government instituted before a law was passed would be subject to challenge in the courts.

“Short of a criminal group getting to him, I think he is safe here,” Young adds.

Edward Snowden: Why the NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong - CSMonitor.com

The Senate, intended as a deliberative body, cannot deliberate when only the folks on the right committees are fully briefed, and the Ron Wyden types among them think what's happening is horribly wrong, but can't tell anyone why because it's illegal just to air the basic facts.

Secrecy Undermines the Ability of Congress to Function as the Framers Intended - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic

First-- as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked-- "When are you going to start-- stop beating your wife" kind of question, which is meaning not-- answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.

And again, to go back to my metaphor. What I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers-- of those books in that metaphorical library-- to me, collection of U.S. persons' data would mean taking the book off the shelf and opening it up and reading it.

Apparently, "any data at all" does not include call record information, just content. Also,

And this has to do with of course somewhat of a semantic, perhaps some would say too-- too cute by half. But it is-- there are honest differences on the semantics of what-- when someone says "collection" to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.

"Collection" does not mean collection.

NBC News Clapper interview transcript

"I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk

Q: What do the leaked documents reveal?

A: "That the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.

IE its not about the program per say, its about the credibility of the political process.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again' | World news | guardian.co.uk

The wording here is cumbersome and typo pocked but this is an important observation:

Google Glass + NSA PRISM essentially amounts to a vision in which a foreign country is suddenly going to be flooded with American spy cameras. It seems easy to imagine any number of foreign governments having a problem with that idea.

More broadly, Google is already facing a variety of anti-trust issues in Europe, where basic economic nationalism is mixing with competition policy concerns. Basically, various European mapping and comparison and shopping firms don't want to be crushed by Google, and European officials are naturally sympathetic to the idea of not letting local firms be crushed by California-based ones. There is legitimate concern that U.S. tech companies are essentially a giant periscope for American intelligence agencies and seem like they'd be a very powerful new weapon in the hands of European companies that want to persuade EU authorities to shackle American firms.

Imagine if it had come out in the 1980s that Japanese intelligence agencies were tracking the location of ever Toyota and Honda vehicle, and then the big response from the Japanese government was to reassure people that Japanese citizens weren't being spied upon this way. There would have been—legitimately—massive political pressure to get Japanese cars out of foreign markets.

American dominance in the high-tech sector is first and foremost a source of national economic advantage, one that could be undone by excessive security involvement.

PRISM tech exports: Will NSA revelations block American companies abroad.

Apparently the word "collection" does not mean collection.

Asked by Wyden, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps collect-but not wittingly.”

Blair drew a distinction between the “collection” or mining of data on specific U.S. citizens by NSA and the massive trove of phone call information that was turned over to the NSA under a negotiated agreement among intelligence officials, the telecommunications companies and the FISA judges. The purpose of the FISA order was to store information in the event that U.S. intelligence agencies need to access it after getting specific intelligence that somebody in the U.S. might be tied to terrorism.  It is only at that point, he explained, that the NSA goes back to the court to get permission to mine or “collect” the data.  

Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans - Open Channel

By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records.

This is an important detail that was not apparent from the court document that was leaked. However, there are significant questions that this raises, particularly as the individual who signed this statement told Congress in March that the NSA was NOT collecting data on millions of Americans.

DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information

Back in February 2013, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an executive summary (PDF) of its findings to justify warrantless border searches of laptops. However, that summary did not include any substantial analysis of the reasoning the government provides.

On Wednesday, though, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the DHS released (PDF) its complete December 2011 Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Impact Assessment.

What is the government’s constitutionally based reasoning for such searches? Frankly, we don’t know. A lot of it is redacted.

On Page 18 of the 52-page document under the section entitled “First Amendment,” several paragraphs are completely blacked out.

Feds say they can search your laptop at the border but won’t say why | Ars Technica