[lern_too_spel]

> but once he got into office he expanded the domestic spying program.

Exactly the opposite happened. According to the documents Snowden leaked, Obama had already shut down email metadata collection, and after the Snowden leaks, Obama limited the phone metadata collection. There are no other NSA domestic spying programs that we know of.

[autoexec]

> "Exactly the opposite happened. According to the documents Snowden leaked"

according to the documents Snowden leaked: https://www.propublica.org/article/new-snowden-documents-rev...

see also: https://www.zdnet.com/article/days-before-trump-takes-office...

There's also a great timeline here:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/timeline-nsa-do...

After Obama got into office the NSA got retroactive immunity, a massive shiny new data center, and they started collecting data from Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon as well as collecting credit card transaction data.

[lern_too_spel]

Your first article is about how the NSA asked for but did not get permission to track hackers who were not known to be tied to foreign governments — no expansion in domestic surveillance there.

Your second article is not about domestic surveillance at all but about foreign surveillance that isn't expanded but filtered by different agencies the same way that the NSA filtered it.

Your third article doesn't contain a single example of expanded domestic surveillance.

The fact remains that Obama completely shut down one of the two domestic surveillance programs that Snowden leaked (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-data-minin...) and limited the other (https://www.lawfareblog.com/nsa-ends-bulk-collection-telepho...).

[autoexec]

> Your first article is about how the NSA asked for but did not get permission to track hackers who were not known to be tied to foreign governments — no expansion in domestic surveillance there.

"In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show...The effort is the latest known expansion of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program"

> Your second article is not about domestic surveillance at all

"the rule changes will make it easier for the government to spot and prevent potential terrorist attacks before they happen, at the expense of the privacy of millions of Americans, whose data may be collected in the surveillance dragnet...a total of 17 government agencies will have access to Americans' data without requiring a warrant"

Seems a whole lot like spying on Americans to me.

> Your third article doesn't contain a single example of expanded domestic surveillance

Except for the whole constant gathering of new types of data from an increasing (one could say "expanding") number of sources since Obama came into office...

For what it's worth while I haven't read every document that leaked I've read many of them. I've so read/seen several interviews and talks with Snowden, and even read his book. He seems pretty okay with what Greenwald came away with.

[lern_too_spel]

If you read the very next sentence after your first quote, you will find:

"The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign governments."

This is surveiling foreign governments' data in the US only when they are hacking Americans. It is a mighty stretch to call this domestic surveillance when the surveilled are very specifically foreign governments (foreign non-governmental hackers are not included).

> "a total of 17 government agencies will have access to Americans' data without requiring a warrant"

If you actually read the rest of the article, they are required to filter out data of Americans anywhere and data of anybody in the US without a warrant, just like the NSA is required to. There is no expansion of domestic surveillance. The only change is that these other agencies get direct access to the taps, but they are subject to the same laws as the NSA.

> Except for the whole constant gathering of new types of data from an increasing (one could say "expanding") number of sources since Obama came into office...

Every single one of those sources was only allowed to provide data on foreigners living outside the US. This is explicitly not domestic surveillance.

> I've so read/seen several interviews and talks with Snowden, and even read his book. He seems pretty okay with what Greenwald came away with.

Snowden very clearly didn't understand PRISM when he leaked it. According to Gellman, Snowden seemed most intent on exposing PRISM, asking Gellman for a guarantee that all the PRISM slides would be published within 72 hours, believing it to be a domestic surveillance program. It wasn't. A well-intentioned dummy can make rash decisions and end up becoming a Russian stooge. Snowden is the poster-child for the Be Cool, Stay In School program.