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That is an excellent question. The NSA developments in recent years have shown that while privacy protections do exist that limit access to collected data (e.g
by rl3 10y ago
That is an excellent question.
The NSA developments in recent years have shown that while privacy protections do exist that limit access to collected data (e.g. FISA warrants), they're still collecting everything on everyone regardless. The intercepted data then rots in a huge database for years at a minimum—in practice probably indefinitely.
In what was one of the the most brilliant legal/public relations plays in recent history, NSA decided to play a shell game with the definitions of the terms "collection" and "targeting", redefining them (when convenient) as the accessing of data—by humans—that's already been intercepted and stored.
- seanp2k2 10y agoWith accessing further defined as an actual human looking at it, not a computer parsing it or generating statistics over the collected data of individuals in aggregate.
- rl3 10y agoUpdated my comment to reflect that, thanks. A good example of the distinction is the raw audio of a domestic phone call in the US. First it's intercepted in bulk, then automatically sent to DSP hardware for transcription into a searchable text log. That wouldn't qualify as "collection" as the NSA defines it until a human analyst actually listened to or laid eyes upon the data. Automated analysis programs looking for keywords or specific patterns of behavior within the data probably require legal authorization as well. However, it's unclear if the legal authorizations such programs operate under are broad in nature, or issued individually in a more explicit manner.