THE NSA ALSO LIES TO FISA JUDGES

This should convince just about anyone, including Pres. Obama, that we need a top to bottom overhaul of the NSA:

Top-Secret Court Castigated N.S.A. on Surveillance
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE
Published: August 21, 2013
NY Times

The 85-page ruling by Judge John D. Bates, then serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, involved an N.S.A. program that searches Americans’ international Internet communications for discussion of foreigners under surveillance. Judge Bates found that the agency had violated the Constitution for several years and declared the problems part of a pattern of “misrepresentation” by agency officials in submissions to the secret court.

Judge Bates portrayed the issue as only the latest time the agency had misled the oversight court about its domestic spying activities.

“The court is troubled that the government’s revelations regarding N.S.A.’s acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program,” he wrote. 

In March 2009, a footnote said, the surveillance court learned that N.S.A. analysts were using the phone log database in ways that went beyond what the judges believed to be the practice because of a “repeated inaccurate statements” in government filings to the court.

“Contrary to the government’s repeated assurances, N.S.A. had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the standard for querying,” Judge Bates recounted. He cited a 2009 ruling that concluded that the requirement had been “so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall ... regime has never functioned effectively.”