In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.
Whereas previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity or were relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the new powers give the center the ability to not only collect and store vast databases of information but also to trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation.
The changes granted by Holder would also allow databases containing information about U.S. citizens to be shared with foreign governments for their own analysis.
A former senior White House official told the Journal that the new changes were “breathtaking in scope.”
Read more at Wired.com. By Kim Zetter.
Photo Credit: European Parliament Creative Commons
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Nothing that this corrupt AG does will ever surprise me! He needs to spend some tome as a guest at a Federal Prison and does his boss!
previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity” Nothing has changed. It’s just that now anyone that is in an America is considered a terrorist threat.
Eric ‘cutthroat’ Holder(man) should be tarred and feathered along with his racist messiah who is illegally occupying our Whiite House. Sad day in America.
well with this administration nothing shocks me any more. as to “terrorist” Americans remember what the head of HLS stated..ALL RETURNING VETS FROM IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN ARE POSSIBLE TERRORISTS !! I will not respond to my opinion of that statement as there are Lady’s present. but there are A LOT of 4 letter words in that response.
This is unconstitutional and treasonous