Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That NSA Intercepts ⇥ nytimes.com

Charlie Savage, New York Times:

The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The change would relax longstanding restrictions on access to the contents of the phone calls and email the security agency vacuums up around the world, including bulk collection of satellite transmissions, communications between foreigners as they cross network switches in the United States, and messages acquired overseas or provided by allies.

The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages — not only foreigners’ phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.

While this has probably been on the books for a while, I have no doubt that the Apple-FBI case accelerated these talks. The NSA soaks up everything; imagine what it’s like when that raw data is shared with other agencies. I see little reason why anyone would not want their data encrypted any more.