WaPo: New documents reveal parameters of NSA’s secret surveillance programs

[ProSense]

New documents reveal parameters of NSA’s secret surveillance programs

By Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Barton Gellman

<...>

Nonetheless, the documents contain a series of steps NSA takes to determine a foreigner’s location. Agency analysts examine leads that may come from other agencies, including from human sources. They conduct research in NSA databases, scrutinize Internet protocol addresses and target “Internet links that terminate in a foreign country.”

<...>

To prevent U.S. citizens and legal residents from being targeted, NSA keeps a database of phone numbers and e-mail addresses associated with people thought to be living in the United States. New requests are compared to the records on that list. Matches are considered signals to put the surveillance on hold...The document on “minimization” spells out rules for protecting privacy, some of which have been described publicly. The rules protect not just citizens, but foreigners in the United States.

If domestic communications contain no significant foreign intelligence information, they must be promptly destroyed. Communications concerning Americans may not be kept for more than five years.

If a target who was outside the United States enters the country, the monitoring must stop immediately.

Communications between a person under criminal indictment in the United States and his or her attorney may be preserved if they contain foreign intelligence information. The portions that do not may not be reviewed or used in any criminal prosecution. And any proposed sharing of the communications must be reviewed by the NSA general counsel first.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-documents-reveal-parameters-of-nsas-secret-surveillance-programs/2013/06/20/54248600-d9f7-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html

[kentuck]

1. Those are the required parameters.

Are we to assume that the NSA obeyed the letter of the law? Do we assume the CIA would obey the letter of the law? Then i would say that we are very naive and have learned nothing from history. They are not going to make anything public that will jeopardize their secrets, their real secrets.

[Logical]

2. When our side is in charge no need to worry about that bad stuff happening! n-t

[ProSense]

3. Kick! n/t

[grasswire]

4. where does NSA get a database of email identities attached to names...

....and phone numbers?

[okaawhatever]

5. Be careful ProSense, all this rational information will get the conspiracy theorists lathered up.

The fact that it was printed in one of the two papers to reveal the story will only make it worse. Thanks for the info.