{"id":285278,"date":"2016-12-17T00:39:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-to-inherit-vast-surveillance-powers\/"},"modified":"2016-12-17T00:39:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T23:39:00","slug":"trump-to-inherit-vast-surveillance-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-to-inherit-vast-surveillance-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump to Inherit Vast Surveillance Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many Democrats trusted President Obama with the vast surveillance powers inherited from President George W. Bush, but now the failure to curtail those powers means they pass on to Donald Trump, notes Nat Parry.<\/p>\n

By Nat Parry<\/p>\n

As the Electoral College gathers across the country on Monday to cast ballots for the 45th<\/sup> president of the United States \u2013 and the reality of a Trump administration draws closer \u2013 an overriding concern (beyond the questionable appointments<\/a> of oil executives, billionaires and bankers to top cabinet posts) is what the Trump presidency might mean in terms of civil liberties, individual privacy and human rights.<\/p>\n

For those who once dismissed the idea that there was anything particularly worrying about the mass surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency under the Bush and Obama administrations, as whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations confirmed more than three years ago, the fact that Donald J. Trump will now be inheriting these sweeping powers might put things into perspective. The same could be said about arbitrary detention, \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d and assassinations.<\/p>\n

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