Analyst:

New CIA privacy rules won’t limit spying on Americans

Rasa - The new privacy guidelines imposed on the CIA by the outgoing administration of US President Barack Obama to restrict domestic surveillance will not limit government eavesdropping on Americans, says Stephen Lendman, a journalist and political analyst in Chicago.

News ID: 426690

Date: 20 January 2017 - 22:03

RNA - “So-called guidelines have been around for the past few decades; it certainly hasn’t stopped the CIA or NSA or FBI about doing anything they want to do,” Lendman said during an interview with Press TV on Thursday.

“Big brother watches everyone in America all the time; Americans are more spied on than ever before in US history,” he said.

“The spying continues; whatever guidelines Obama is putting out are really for public consumption, but in no way change the policy of America’s intelligence community,” he argued.

On Wednesday, the CIA published new privacy rules that are designed to limit its use of information on American citizens.

The updated procedures include what the CIA must do when it collects, stores and analyzes information on Americans.

The new restrictions will force the CIA, whose mission is to focus on foreign targets, to dispose of the personal data of Americans it comes across during its probes within five years.

The incoming administration of Donald Trump can change the revised procedures. The president-elect has said he favors stronger government surveillance powers, including the monitoring of "certain" mosques in the United States.

The new rules were released amid continued concern over the US government's mass surveillance programs, an issue that gained prominence after intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA secretly collected the communications data of millions of ordinary Americans.

Snowden, who worked for the CIA before being hired by an NSA contractor, revealed numerous global surveillance programs that the US government conducted with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments.

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