Buh, Buh, Buh, Bush!

Is all I hear when I discuss the NSA scandals with democrats, who like to maintain that the poor little ole Obama administration is stuck with the nasty policies that Bush instigated, and that somehow they don't have the strength to repeal.   However that position took another hit today when it was revealed the Obama administration asked and received a waiver on some of the controls on privacy for US citizens from the FISA court that the Bush administration had put in place:

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Funny how the WAPO can't bring itself to say who controlled the government in 2008...