Name:   phil - Subject:   No surprise Date:   3/22/2017 2:56:27 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/15/heres-how-well-know-if-trump-engages-in-secret-surveillance/?utm_term=.4ad3749441fa

from Dec 2015

for a really good laugh

This makes them relatively easy to overturn. Trump could issue directives to his appointees to weaken or abandon those restrictions. For example, he could make it easier for FBI agents to seize and stockpile the personal records of Americans and to obtain the phone records of journalists. He could also give federal criminal investigators even greater access to the troves of data collected, without warrants, by the NSA. But because many details of surveillance practices and restrictions are secret, we don’t know exactly what he could do.

If Trump were to remove restraints on investigators or authorize new surveillance programs, the public wouldn’t necessarily hear about it. Presidents can issue classified orders to change the rules for domestic spying, knowing that the other branches of government are unlikely to push back publicly even if the orders violate statutes. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, presidents have the final say over public disclosure of national security information. Opponents usually cannot criticize classified rules without illegally revealing them.

Most of it reads like the Obama playbook for his last months in office.