The Atlantic

Obama's Parting Blow Against Privacy

The NSA is relaxing its privacy rules, allowing more information on the private communications of Americans to be sent to 15 different intelligence agencies.
Source: Larry Downing / Reuters

Long before Donald Trump entered politics, I fretted about ongoing mass surveillance on Americans powered by technology beyond what’s found in some dystopian novels. We have no idea who the president will be in 2017I wrote, “nor do we know who'll sit on key Senate oversight committees, who will head the various national-security agencies, or whether the moral character of the people doing so, individually or in aggregate, will more closely resemble George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Yoo, or .” Whoever is in charge, I declared, “will possess the capacity to be tyrants––to use

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