NSA surveillance covers 75 percent of U.S. Internet traffic

[Ichingcarpenter]

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency's surveillance network has the capacity to reach around 75 percent of all U.S. Internet communications in the hunt for foreign intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Citing current and former NSA officials, the newspaper said the 75 percent coverage is more of Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed.

The Journal said the agency keeps the content of some emails sent between U.S. citizens and also filters domestic phone calls made over the Internet.

The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, looks for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the United States, the paper said.

But officials told the Journal the system's broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE97K02V20130821

[uponit7771]

1. Hopefully it'll increase, city traffic surveillance is only around 30% in DFW...I would like more...

...city traffic to be surveyed so I know where the accidents and slow traffic is.

P.S. Internet traffic travels on public mediums too

[Socal31]

5. Nice try.

The NSA isn't needed to monitor the flow of traffic. There are numerous internet health reports available, such as: http://internetpulse.net/


In your clichéd car analogy, the city traffic surveillance would follow you when you stepped out of your car, and record your activities at your bank, your employer, your attorney's office, your sexual habits in the bedroom, your family discussions, etc.

However, I have a feeling this post is a waste of time. The only thing that will change your tune on this shredding of the BoR is for a (R) administration to come into power, which is sad.

[villager]

2. well, the round-the-clock NSA Boosters have, predictably, checked in

replete with lame humor, etc.

[Demo_Chris]

3. kick

[Socal31]

4. Interesting.

Does anyone see a possible link with this story from only a couple days ago:

Google goes down for five minutes on Friday night, global internet traffic drops 40%: report

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/google-minutes-web-traffic-plummets-article-1.1429712#ixzz2canCG0r3

If those are the global numbers, I wonder what it was for US.

[Catherina]

6. Latest Leak: NSA Can Spy On Almost Anything, Gets To Set Its Own Filters

Latest Leak: NSA Can Spy On Almost Anything, Gets To Set Its Own Filters

from the and-another-shoe-drops dept

...

And, of course, it will come as no surprise that these programs that work directly with telcos to tap into full internet traffic aren't just about metadata:

...this set of programs shows the NSA has the capability to track almost anything that happens online, so long as it is covered by a broad court order.

(....) Inevitably, officials say, some U.S. Internet communications are scanned and intercepted, including both "metadata" about communications, such as the "to" and "from" lines in an email, and the contents of the communications themselves.

This also shouldn't be a surprise. For all the talk of "metadata" it was always clear that the surveillance defenders were talking about this program only, which was the Patriot Act Section 215 "business records" program. But other programs, such as these listed above, were clearly about actual content as well.

...

The WSJ further reports that, while most of the requests are targeted towards foreign communications, there are times when it's quite clear that requests are likely to cover domestic communications. Some telcos apparently push back, causing "friction", while others seem to comply with no qualms, though there is no indication of which telcos fall into which camp.

The report further confirms that this program is considered "legal" by the administration thanks to a broad interpretation of the FISA Amendments Act, giving the NSA the power to snoop on people "reasonably believed" to be outside the US, rather than requiring "probable cause" that they were "an agent of a foreign power." Also, there's this:

NSA has discretion on setting its filters, and the system relies significantly on self-policing. This can result in improper collection that continues for years.

The report also claims that it was one of these "mistakes" that resulted in three years of illegal collections (much greater than the "few months" that were revealed in last week's Washington Post article).

And now we wait for another bunch of carefully worded statements from NSA defenders...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130820/18365124262/latest-leak-nsa-can-spy-almost-anything-gets-to-set-its-own-filters.shtml

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. The NSA has been run by Bush guys since before 911

I don't think that sinks in to people.

The FBI has been run by Bush appointees

The DOD has been run by Bush or Republicans appointees.

Its a cancer that they won't look at.