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N.S.A Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets

221 points by sashk 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago
> For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials said. Yeah, sure. Maybe don't do mass surveillance then? > The agency then proposed putting the bundled messages in a special repository to which analysts, searching through intercepts to write intelligence reports, would generally not have access. The court permitted that type of collection to continue with that restriction. But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules. This seems to happen Every.Single.Time. I wonder what really prompted the NSA to stop this collection. Maybe they just want to act all "We're good boys now" to convince Congress that they can be trusted with FISA Amendments' renewal, later this year?
- __jal 9y ago
  We'll probably have to wait for the next Bamford book to find out what happened. Given past performance, I would put money on this being replaced by a functionally identical program with a legal hack, and of course a new name. (The new name is vital so that "we no longer collect that data under that program" remains a technically-true statement.)
- frandroid 9y ago
  > discovered
- JorgeGT 9y ago
  > I wonder what really prompted the NSA to stop this collection. Rogue analyst finding damaging emails from some relevant politician? I.e. let's look at this Saudi Aramco chain mail because maybe extremist ties, but find email of Mr. Politician asking for donations bundled within the chain?
Baeocystin 9y ago
Things that I do not for one second believe: this. Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure. But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.
- 5ilv3r 9y ago
  And they already have all the infrastructure in place.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    Yeah, but Mike Rogers has been reading Marie Kondo.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Does feel a bit like Abbot at the end of the first Bourne movie: "The Treadstone project has actually already been terminated. It was designed primarily as a sort of advanced game program. We'd hoped it might build into a good training platform, but quite honestly, for a strictly theoretical exercise, we thought it was far too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio was just too high. It's been all but decommissioned at this point." Yeah, over as far as some bureaucracy is confirmed, but totally another 4 or more sequels coming.
- choward 9y ago
  Exactly, you can't just blindly trust things people say without evidence. There is no way to prove the NSA doesn't do something, therefore I always assume the worst.
- alistproducer2 9y ago
  You took the words right out of my head. The propaganda coming out of mainstream media (on all sides) is not even close to believable anymore. Nothing is true and everything is possible.
  - andreyf 9y ago
jey 9y ago
> The problem stemmed from certain bundled messages that internet companies sometimes packaged together and transmitted as a unit. Wat?
- badosu 9y ago
  If you intercept traffic from gmail as a whole you would get messages from US citizens, not only from foreign people, not counting replies, fws, etc. That's my take from this excuse.
throwfast1 9y ago
so, the infrastructure equipment used to do this is up for sale right? anyone know where? I'm in the market for cheap network/server/security gear.
seibelj 9y ago
Don't ever rely on email to be secure. It is an insecure medium despite all the bandaids on it. It's useful for sure, but assume it's being read by the government before you send a message.
nostromo 9y ago
> For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials said. "Oops didn't mean to." Keep in mind that the NSA lied to Congress very recently. Thanks to Snowden they were caught in that lie. I don't believe anything they say. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/james-clappers-testimony-one-year-later/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/...
- tajen 9y ago
  The only credible way to trust that NSA had stopped wiretapping would be a drastic enough reduction of its finances (and no transfer to FBI/CIA for that purpose).
theprop 9y ago
It looks like this is likely a temporary cease & desist in order to get court authorization for their "broader warrantless surveillance program" while they figure out how to get those "bundled messages" into a separate repository. I'd guess the NSA will eventually resume this massive email collection program once they can get it such that it's in compliance with the Court rules (which they seem to have been unable to do quickly right now hence ceasing it). The good news, however slight it may be, is that the NSA may be at least obeying court orders somewhat rigorously.
kevwil 9y ago
Can we get an inside contractor to leak proof of such? Because, you know, trust or the lack thereof.
pc2g4d 9y ago
They're trying to get a PR win out of that fact that---for now---they're not continuing the program. Later, when they've refined their technical infrastructure in a way that makes it easy to comply with whatever new requirements the FISA judge(s) came up with, they'll resume the program but not tell a soul. That's how I'm interpreting this, anyway. I hope I'm wrong.
- cma 9y ago
  And it may have been the only way to satisfy the court anyway, they had previously assured the court surrounding communications to these wouldn't be searched, and then they were searching them too (so even if you didn't mention a targeted email, if your email was in an internal email provider bundle (like a backup across data centers), it was getting searched too: >But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules. The agency brought the matter to the court’s attention, resulting in a delay in reauthorizing the broader warrantless surveillance program until the agency proposed ceasing this collection practice.
Jerry2 9y ago
If they don't collect it under this program, they'll collect it under some other program. Or they'll just let one of the FIVE EYES partners spy on Americans. That's how they operate.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  One of the main points of the Five Eyes agreement (originally BRUSA) is that the member states have a "no-spy agreement" with each other. That's why you see French leaders in the leaks but not heads of state of Canada or the UK. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the-five-countries-that-dont-spy-on-each-other/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the-fi... The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main planks, making it an especially strange rumor.
  - Jerry2 9y ago
    >The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main planks, making it an especially strange rumor. Huh? GCHQ has been spying on Americans for a long time. Here's the latest example: [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spie...
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      They were spying on Russians. "The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets."
jancsika 9y ago
We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect" because I don't have time to track down and read the relevant article. But the upshot is-- their definition is idiosyncratic and misleading for a piece that has a general audience like this one.
- nostromo 9y ago
  The Times really did a crap job of explaining that. The headline is so unequivocal but a close reading of the article implies the opposite is true.
  - hengheng 9y ago
    Indeed, congratulations on their great PR work.
- nyolfen 9y ago
  their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it. [1] https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE
  - jancsika 9y ago
    And we have no idea if their idiosyncratic definition has changed since then.
  - logn 9y ago
    Ah so that lends credence to my rationale for scraping websites. Until I actually look at the scraped data no scraping has taken place so no terms of use have been violated. When I look at the scraped data the terms of use come into effect but now I'm personally present so no robotic scraping has taken place.
sandworm101 9y ago
Imho this has nothing to do with privacy or law. This is an operational decision. The bad guys aren't using email these days. I don't agree with much of the "going dark" narrative, but it is clear that bad guys are using IM services and other not-email means of communicating. So to hear NSA talk about not collecting email is like them saying they are going to stop monitoring library records: It sounds like a win for privacy but only on paper and we know that they will simply redeploy resources to the interception of other communication.
djschnei 9y ago
These criminals are sorry they broke the law, promise not to do it again. I'm all warm and fuzzy.
a3n 9y ago
How would we even know? No one can even go down in there. Congressional oversight is done by them coming up to Congress and saying "Nope, we're not breaking any laws. Not wittingly."
- sneak 9y ago
  http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com
hackuser 9y ago
A fundamental conflict keeps coming up: 1) Security agencies are much more effective if they collect data before they know it's important. If they wait until Jane Doe blows up a building to start collecting intelligence on her, much of the evidence and other valuable information will be long gone. 2) Spying on innocent people violates their privacy, their legal rights, and is a tool for oppression. Warrants are required for a good reason. One somewhat obvious solution is to store the data in escrow, available only with a warrant. Nobody would trust a private company with all that data (I hope, though I some countries require ISPs and other service providers to maintain some history), so who can we trust? I wonder if the courts are an answer. On one hand, it is not their role to provide investigative tools to the prosecution and could even violate their independence and neutrality. On the other, there would be little question about whether law enforcement had a valid warrant or whether the courts would respect by their own authority to issue warrants (and on the third hand, rather than the courts cleaning up the corruption, the corruption could spread to the courts too). Does anyone know if there's a precedent?
- 1001101 9y ago
  We had a good system in place in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, broad construction of this document in secret courts without an adversarial process has diminished it substantially. Your proposed system requires trust and goodwill, and that's in short supply.
- Jach 9y ago
  As another comment mentioned the NSA definition of collect seems to be (or was) only when they "look" at it, whatever that means exactly. An interesting thing that I like to imagine happens with 1 (though I have no evidence) is that often Jane Doe does blow up a building, but then you see in the news over the next few weeks reports of rounding up terrorist cells related to Jane Doe. If they had to start fresh every time I don't think they could do that, they must have prior information, so I like to think it's the powers involved paying the Palantir tax. It's very reactive, which sucks for the people killed by Jane, but perhaps it's indicative that things haven't yet gone full Minority Report.
chinathrow 9y ago
Even then - the data of rest of the world is still sucked up wherever possible. Signed, A non-US citizen of this world
iced0wn 9y ago
Uh, reporting in lol.
Mendenhall 9y ago
Easy, now they just get it from the rest of 5 eyes then store it :)
wheelerwj 9y ago
MFW trump making it harder to prove links to foreign government happens to coincide with my 4th Amendment rights...
dmix 9y ago
I don't like how this article implies that they aren't saving and storing all of your emails unless you are communicating with a surveillance target. In reality they are sucking up all data in transit and only looking at it when it involves a foreign target. But technically they are storing it regardless if you do or not, and we are basically trusting them to not look at it. This seems to be the biggest issue that is never addressed in these articles. Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an explanation why every single one gets approved.
- andreyf 9y ago
  > Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an explanation why every single one gets approved. What's wrong with those claims? If the guidelines are clear and their lawyers are competent, they can turn down a request without bothering the court. Surely you'll agree DoJ lawyers can tell whether a request meets the criteria for a legal intercept the vast majority of the time? "Probable cause" isn't exactly novel case law.
- 3131s 9y ago
  > we are basically trusting them to not look at it. And trusting them not to lose control of the data. Given their inability to protect against Snowden, Shadow Brokers, etc. that is of course a reasonable possibility. It's also a national security risk, imagine if an antagonistic foreign government had blackmail power over the US business elite, military officials, and politicians.
meowschwitz 9y ago
5 Eyes is collecting AND STORING EVERYTHING that enters or leaves their respective country.
- HappyTypist 9y ago
  They're also collecting everything inside and outside their country.
exabrial 9y ago
This program likely started under Bush but was KEPT by Obama. It really upsets me that people give him a free pass for such an egregious violation of the Constitution.
- IIAOPSW 9y ago
  And has yet to stop under Trump. Let's hold all presidents to the same standard.
yuhong 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195
sneak 9y ago
Only 4% of humans live in America. The other 96% deserve human rights, too.
- chronic940 9y ago
  If they're not residing in America nor are a threat to the US, the 96% should be ignored.
jimsmart 9y ago
Err, the same emails that only a few years back they claimed they weren't 'collecting' anyway?[0] Totally believable. Yeah, totally — and I'm the King of England. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think-again/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-...
c3534l 9y ago
Sure they did.
systematical 9y ago
Right....
dbg31415 9y ago
If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. We'd need to understand what their definition of NSA, or collection, or emails are. I think it's most likely they are saying that the entire NSA as a whole isn't doing collection, only some subset of the NSA is... and maybe they define collection as capturing and retaining information for 10 years, and now they are only doing it for 9 years 11 months... and emails mean everything you ever do online and SnapChat and Signal and Texts too. Do not trust these people.
- 1001101 9y ago
  You forgot about World of Warcraft [1] [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video-games/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video-game...
  - dbg31415 9y ago
    This is hilarious. That someone in the government was paid to watch Barrens Chat full of Chuck Norris jokes, debates about if STR or AGI was better for Enhancements Shaman, and links to in-game items that would make funny dildos really amuses me. /1 Anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]!
whatnotests 9y ago
Sure they did.
encryptThrow32 9y ago
The filter on XKS that prevents US hits on selectors has been enhanced to satisfy ruling of the court. Its still collected in perpetuity, but under the Schrödinger approach to surveillance it no longer exists. Maybe nothing can truly change, just as one cannot uninvent a technology -- telephony, broadcasting or social media are with us forever. Maybe true to for global passive surveillance.
19eightyfour 9y ago
I don't know why Snowden is so quick to tweet that this is a victory. To me, it's a multivariate equation, and all they've done is made one of the variables smaller. They can sustain collection at the same amounts, by making another variable proportionally larger. For instance, what's changed is that they no longer collect signals that mention a target, only signals to or from a target. So all you need to do to keep collecting the same amount, is to make a lot more targets.
DesiLurker 9y ago
sure, collecting emails has no benefit unless people believe that they are not being watched!
godgod 9y ago
So can we now shut down the NSA secret data center in Bluffdale Utah? If they're no longer collecting our E-mails surely they have no need to store it all. Somehow I doubt it will be closing anytime soon.
shomyo 9y ago
"Halts"
benevol 9y ago
Right. And Trump starts caring about the environment. That's just adding one more insult to a stack of insults that's already higher than the Trump tower.
SapphireSun 9y ago
The NYT story was way too friendly in my opinion. It almost took the claims at face value that the agency did this voluntarily. I liked this version better: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major-surveillance-program-that-captured-americans-communications-without-a-warrant/ https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major-...
mrtree 9y ago
How can anyone know anyways???
godmodus 9y ago
I doubt that, esp with all the russian tenssions recently.
LeeHwang 9y ago
Wow can't say I expected this under President Trump, It's something I thought Obama would do.
fallingfrog 9y ago
Sorry, but the NSA has zero credibility at this point. I don't believe a word of it.
tripzilch 9y ago
> give the N.S.A. copies of internet messages that cross the international border and contain a search term that identifies foreigners That's a pretty misleading way to state the criteria. A reader that doesn't know any better would assume that a message that is sent from within the USA to somewhere else within the USA, would already have been exempt from this program. But everybody with a little bit of background knowledge, including the author, knows that internet packets are routed, cached and stored all over the planet without regard to international borders. Even a packet or message that has both endpoints on US soil is very likely to cross international borders at some point in its route, because that's how the internet works and these services' infrastructure. Just like calling this a "major development". I mean really, is this defeat? Sunk the bar that low? Call it "highly unlikely", "unprecedented" or something like that if you want to highlight the fact how unusual it is that the NSA gives up a tiny crumb of its capabilities. Call it "promising" maybe if you want to be really optimistic about it (hah). But in what universe is this a "major development", instead of a tiny insignifant drop in the ocean of the NSAs vast and total surveillance capabilities? Does anybody believe that they are now in any way subject to less surveillance than before? It's like lowering the speed limit by 0.1mph and calling it a "major development" for the safety of kids playing on the streets. Here's another nice one: > The inquiries were conducted for legitimate intelligence purposes, the official said, but under rules imposed by the intelligence court, analysts were not supposed to search for Americans’ information within that data set So ... the inquiries were conducted for legitimate purposes, it's just that they were against the rules, is all. I'm not sure I'm familiar with this new interpretation of the word "legitimate". No but seriously can anyone explain this line? If I'm being as favourable as I can possibly manage, I suppose they mean this: The purpose of the inquiries was legitimate, it's just performing them is not. So what does it mean if merely the purpose is legitimate? Did this official just try to let off these NSA-analysts because "the ends justified the means" ?? Not that it matters that much to me any way, because I am one of those filthy foreigners that doesn't have any right to any privacy whatsoever in the eyes of the NSA and a worryingly large percentage of US citizens cheering them on for that, because it is not them--ehm I mean because it is their job (if you don't think too hard about it). There's so many people arguing, many people who are otherwise very reasonable, that it's somehow okay to utterly violate people's privacy (on an unprecedented global scale) for no other reason than they are foreigners. No other reason. Being foreign is enough that you decided my private life is somehow not my own. And of course that my government is doing it too! Except that they don't have the budget or the unique position in internet infrastructure to violate privacy on such a global scale. But they do still try. And I won't let that slide or cheer them on for it either, just because they're doing it to "other" people.

221 points by sashk 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago

> For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials said. Yeah, sure. Maybe don't do mass surveillance then? > The agency then proposed putting the bundled messages in a special repository to which analysts, searching through intercepts to write intelligence reports, would generally not have access. The court permitted that type of collection to continue with that restriction. But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules. This seems to happen Every.Single.Time. I wonder what really prompted the NSA to stop this collection. Maybe they just want to act all "We're good boys now" to convince Congress that they can be trusted with FISA Amendments' renewal, later this year?

__jal 9y ago
We'll probably have to wait for the next Bamford book to find out what happened. Given past performance, I would put money on this being replaced by a functionally identical program with a legal hack, and of course a new name. (The new name is vital so that "we no longer collect that data under that program" remains a technically-true statement.)
frandroid 9y ago
> discovered
JorgeGT 9y ago
> I wonder what really prompted the NSA to stop this collection. Rogue analyst finding damaging emails from some relevant politician? I.e. let's look at this Saudi Aramco chain mail because maybe extremist ties, but find email of Mr. Politician asking for donations bundled within the chain?

Baeocystin 9y ago

Things that I do not for one second believe: this. Maybe this one particular program, under one particular name, sure. But overall? I just don't see it. I am not saying this cynically, I just don't. Data collection is too easy, database queries too simple.

5ilv3r 9y ago
And they already have all the infrastructure in place.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Yeah, but Mike Rogers has been reading Marie Kondo.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Does feel a bit like Abbot at the end of the first Bourne movie: "The Treadstone project has actually already been terminated. It was designed primarily as a sort of advanced game program. We'd hoped it might build into a good training platform, but quite honestly, for a strictly theoretical exercise, we thought it was far too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio was just too high. It's been all but decommissioned at this point." Yeah, over as far as some bureaucracy is confirmed, but totally another 4 or more sequels coming.
choward 9y ago
Exactly, you can't just blindly trust things people say without evidence. There is no way to prove the NSA doesn't do something, therefore I always assume the worst.
alistproducer2 9y ago
You took the words right out of my head. The propaganda coming out of mainstream media (on all sides) is not even close to believable anymore. Nothing is true and everything is possible.
- andreyf 9y ago

jey 9y ago

> The problem stemmed from certain bundled messages that internet companies sometimes packaged together and transmitted as a unit. Wat?

badosu 9y ago
If you intercept traffic from gmail as a whole you would get messages from US citizens, not only from foreign people, not counting replies, fws, etc. That's my take from this excuse.

throwfast1 9y ago

so, the infrastructure equipment used to do this is up for sale right? anyone know where? I'm in the market for cheap network/server/security gear.

seibelj 9y ago

Don't ever rely on email to be secure. It is an insecure medium despite all the bandaids on it. It's useful for sure, but assume it's being read by the government before you send a message.

nostromo 9y ago

> For technical reasons, the agency ended up collecting messages sent and received domestically as a byproduct of such surveillance, the officials said. "Oops didn't mean to." Keep in mind that the NSA lied to Congress very recently. Thanks to Snowden they were caught in that lie. I don't believe anything they say. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/james-clappers-testimony-one-year-later/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/mar/11/...

tajen 9y ago
The only credible way to trust that NSA had stopped wiretapping would be a drastic enough reduction of its finances (and no transfer to FBI/CIA for that purpose).

theprop 9y ago

It looks like this is likely a temporary cease & desist in order to get court authorization for their "broader warrantless surveillance program" while they figure out how to get those "bundled messages" into a separate repository. I'd guess the NSA will eventually resume this massive email collection program once they can get it such that it's in compliance with the Court rules (which they seem to have been unable to do quickly right now hence ceasing it). The good news, however slight it may be, is that the NSA may be at least obeying court orders somewhat rigorously.

kevwil 9y ago

Can we get an inside contractor to leak proof of such? Because, you know, trust or the lack thereof.

pc2g4d 9y ago

They're trying to get a PR win out of that fact that---for now---they're not continuing the program. Later, when they've refined their technical infrastructure in a way that makes it easy to comply with whatever new requirements the FISA judge(s) came up with, they'll resume the program but not tell a soul. That's how I'm interpreting this, anyway. I hope I'm wrong.

cma 9y ago
And it may have been the only way to satisfy the court anyway, they had previously assured the court surrounding communications to these wouldn't be searched, and then they were searching them too (so even if you didn't mention a targeted email, if your email was in an internal email provider bundle (like a backup across data centers), it was getting searched too: >But last year, officials said, the N.S.A. discovered that analysts were querying the bundled messages in a way that did not comply with those rules. The agency brought the matter to the court’s attention, resulting in a delay in reauthorizing the broader warrantless surveillance program until the agency proposed ceasing this collection practice.

Jerry2 9y ago

If they don't collect it under this program, they'll collect it under some other program. Or they'll just let one of the FIVE EYES partners spy on Americans. That's how they operate.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
One of the main points of the Five Eyes agreement (originally BRUSA) is that the member states have a "no-spy agreement" with each other. That's why you see French leaders in the leaks but not heads of state of Canada or the UK. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the-five-countries-that-dont-spy-on-each-other/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/an-exclusive-club-the-fi... The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main planks, making it an especially strange rumor.
- Jerry2 9y ago
  >The rumor that they spy on each other and share that data is not substantiated in any leaks and specifically goes against one of the main planks, making it an especially strange rumor. Huh? GCHQ has been spying on Americans for a long time. Here's the latest example: [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spie...
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    They were spying on Russians. "The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets."

jancsika 9y ago

We can't sensibly discuss this story here unless we know which definition of "collect" is being used in the story. Normal definition: collect. For example: "Even collected all the data going to and from Bob's house by putting a splitter on the cable." NSA's definition: not that, as cited in various stories sourced by the Snowden leaks from the Guardian. I won't attempt to define exactly how the NSA defines "collect" because I don't have time to track down and read the relevant article. But the upshot is-- their definition is idiosyncratic and misleading for a piece that has a general audience like this one.

nostromo 9y ago
The Times really did a crap job of explaining that. The headline is so unequivocal but a close reading of the article implies the opposite is true.
- hengheng 9y ago
  Indeed, congratulations on their great PR work.
nyolfen 9y ago
their definition (via secret interpretation of USSID 18, according to Bill Binney[1]) is roughly that it's only collected if they actually go back and look at it at some point down the line. your web browsing history (or whatever) sitting on a hard drive in utah doesn't fall under this definition until they look at it. [1] https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE https://youtu.be/r9-3K3rkPRE
- jancsika 9y ago
  And we have no idea if their idiosyncratic definition has changed since then.
- logn 9y ago
  Ah so that lends credence to my rationale for scraping websites. Until I actually look at the scraped data no scraping has taken place so no terms of use have been violated. When I look at the scraped data the terms of use come into effect but now I'm personally present so no robotic scraping has taken place.

sandworm101 9y ago

Imho this has nothing to do with privacy or law. This is an operational decision. The bad guys aren't using email these days. I don't agree with much of the "going dark" narrative, but it is clear that bad guys are using IM services and other not-email means of communicating. So to hear NSA talk about not collecting email is like them saying they are going to stop monitoring library records: It sounds like a win for privacy but only on paper and we know that they will simply redeploy resources to the interception of other communication.

djschnei 9y ago

These criminals are sorry they broke the law, promise not to do it again. I'm all warm and fuzzy.

a3n 9y ago

How would we even know? No one can even go down in there. Congressional oversight is done by them coming up to Congress and saying "Nope, we're not breaking any laws. Not wittingly."

sneak 9y ago
http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com

hackuser 9y ago

A fundamental conflict keeps coming up: 1) Security agencies are much more effective if they collect data before they know it's important. If they wait until Jane Doe blows up a building to start collecting intelligence on her, much of the evidence and other valuable information will be long gone. 2) Spying on innocent people violates their privacy, their legal rights, and is a tool for oppression. Warrants are required for a good reason. One somewhat obvious solution is to store the data in escrow, available only with a warrant. Nobody would trust a private company with all that data (I hope, though I some countries require ISPs and other service providers to maintain some history), so who can we trust? I wonder if the courts are an answer. On one hand, it is not their role to provide investigative tools to the prosecution and could even violate their independence and neutrality. On the other, there would be little question about whether law enforcement had a valid warrant or whether the courts would respect by their own authority to issue warrants (and on the third hand, rather than the courts cleaning up the corruption, the corruption could spread to the courts too). Does anyone know if there's a precedent?

1001101 9y ago
We had a good system in place in the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, broad construction of this document in secret courts without an adversarial process has diminished it substantially. Your proposed system requires trust and goodwill, and that's in short supply.
Jach 9y ago
As another comment mentioned the NSA definition of collect seems to be (or was) only when they "look" at it, whatever that means exactly. An interesting thing that I like to imagine happens with 1 (though I have no evidence) is that often Jane Doe does blow up a building, but then you see in the news over the next few weeks reports of rounding up terrorist cells related to Jane Doe. If they had to start fresh every time I don't think they could do that, they must have prior information, so I like to think it's the powers involved paying the Palantir tax. It's very reactive, which sucks for the people killed by Jane, but perhaps it's indicative that things haven't yet gone full Minority Report.

chinathrow 9y ago

Even then - the data of rest of the world is still sucked up wherever possible. Signed, A non-US citizen of this world

iced0wn 9y ago

Uh, reporting in lol.

Mendenhall 9y ago

Easy, now they just get it from the rest of 5 eyes then store it :)

wheelerwj 9y ago

MFW trump making it harder to prove links to foreign government happens to coincide with my 4th Amendment rights...

dmix 9y ago

I don't like how this article implies that they aren't saving and storing all of your emails unless you are communicating with a surveillance target. In reality they are sucking up all data in transit and only looking at it when it involves a foreign target. But technically they are storing it regardless if you do or not, and we are basically trusting them to not look at it. This seems to be the biggest issue that is never addressed in these articles. Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an explanation why every single one gets approved.

andreyf 9y ago
> Not to mention the FISA court process being oddly rubber-stampy. Despite claims that they try really-really hard to get each one right, as an explanation why every single one gets approved. What's wrong with those claims? If the guidelines are clear and their lawyers are competent, they can turn down a request without bothering the court. Surely you'll agree DoJ lawyers can tell whether a request meets the criteria for a legal intercept the vast majority of the time? "Probable cause" isn't exactly novel case law.
3131s 9y ago
> we are basically trusting them to not look at it. And trusting them not to lose control of the data. Given their inability to protect against Snowden, Shadow Brokers, etc. that is of course a reasonable possibility. It's also a national security risk, imagine if an antagonistic foreign government had blackmail power over the US business elite, military officials, and politicians.

meowschwitz 9y ago

5 Eyes is collecting AND STORING EVERYTHING that enters or leaves their respective country.

HappyTypist 9y ago
They're also collecting everything inside and outside their country.

exabrial 9y ago

This program likely started under Bush but was KEPT by Obama. It really upsets me that people give him a free pass for such an egregious violation of the Constitution.

IIAOPSW 9y ago
And has yet to stop under Trump. Let's hold all presidents to the same standard.

yuhong 9y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181195

sneak 9y ago

Only 4% of humans live in America. The other 96% deserve human rights, too.

chronic940 9y ago
If they're not residing in America nor are a threat to the US, the 96% should be ignored.

jimsmart 9y ago

Err, the same emails that only a few years back they claimed they weren't 'collecting' anyway?[0] Totally believable. Yeah, totally — and I'm the King of England. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think-again/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-...

c3534l 9y ago

Sure they did.

systematical 9y ago

Right....

dbg31415 9y ago

If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. We'd need to understand what their definition of NSA, or collection, or emails are. I think it's most likely they are saying that the entire NSA as a whole isn't doing collection, only some subset of the NSA is... and maybe they define collection as capturing and retaining information for 10 years, and now they are only doing it for 9 years 11 months... and emails mean everything you ever do online and SnapChat and Signal and Texts too. Do not trust these people.

1001101 9y ago
You forgot about World of Warcraft [1] [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video-games/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/nsa-spying-video-game...
- dbg31415 9y ago
  This is hilarious. That someone in the government was paid to watch Barrens Chat full of Chuck Norris jokes, debates about if STR or AGI was better for Enhancements Shaman, and links to in-game items that would make funny dildos really amuses me. /1 Anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]!

whatnotests 9y ago

Sure they did.

encryptThrow32 9y ago

The filter on XKS that prevents US hits on selectors has been enhanced to satisfy ruling of the court. Its still collected in perpetuity, but under the Schrödinger approach to surveillance it no longer exists. Maybe nothing can truly change, just as one cannot uninvent a technology -- telephony, broadcasting or social media are with us forever. Maybe true to for global passive surveillance.

19eightyfour 9y ago

I don't know why Snowden is so quick to tweet that this is a victory. To me, it's a multivariate equation, and all they've done is made one of the variables smaller. They can sustain collection at the same amounts, by making another variable proportionally larger. For instance, what's changed is that they no longer collect signals that mention a target, only signals to or from a target. So all you need to do to keep collecting the same amount, is to make a lot more targets.

DesiLurker 9y ago

sure, collecting emails has no benefit unless people believe that they are not being watched!

godgod 9y ago

So can we now shut down the NSA secret data center in Bluffdale Utah? If they're no longer collecting our E-mails surely they have no need to store it all. Somehow I doubt it will be closing anytime soon.

shomyo 9y ago

"Halts"

benevol 9y ago

Right. And Trump starts caring about the environment. That's just adding one more insult to a stack of insults that's already higher than the Trump tower.

SapphireSun 9y ago

The NYT story was way too friendly in my opinion. It almost took the claims at face value that the agency did this voluntarily. I liked this version better: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major-surveillance-program-that-captured-americans-communications-without-a-warrant/ https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/nsa-backs-down-on-major-...

mrtree 9y ago

How can anyone know anyways???

godmodus 9y ago

I doubt that, esp with all the russian tenssions recently.

LeeHwang 9y ago

Wow can't say I expected this under President Trump, It's something I thought Obama would do.

fallingfrog 9y ago

Sorry, but the NSA has zero credibility at this point. I don't believe a word of it.

tripzilch 9y ago

> give the N.S.A. copies of internet messages that cross the international border and contain a search term that identifies foreigners That's a pretty misleading way to state the criteria. A reader that doesn't know any better would assume that a message that is sent from within the USA to somewhere else within the USA, would already have been exempt from this program. But everybody with a little bit of background knowledge, including the author, knows that internet packets are routed, cached and stored all over the planet without regard to international borders. Even a packet or message that has both endpoints on US soil is very likely to cross international borders at some point in its route, because that's how the internet works and these services' infrastructure. Just like calling this a "major development". I mean really, is this defeat? Sunk the bar that low? Call it "highly unlikely", "unprecedented" or something like that if you want to highlight the fact how unusual it is that the NSA gives up a tiny crumb of its capabilities. Call it "promising" maybe if you want to be really optimistic about it (hah). But in what universe is this a "major development", instead of a tiny insignifant drop in the ocean of the NSAs vast and total surveillance capabilities? Does anybody believe that they are now in any way subject to less surveillance than before? It's like lowering the speed limit by 0.1mph and calling it a "major development" for the safety of kids playing on the streets. Here's another nice one: > The inquiries were conducted for legitimate intelligence purposes, the official said, but under rules imposed by the intelligence court, analysts were not supposed to search for Americans’ information within that data set So ... the inquiries were conducted for legitimate purposes, it's just that they were against the rules, is all. I'm not sure I'm familiar with this new interpretation of the word "legitimate". No but seriously can anyone explain this line? If I'm being as favourable as I can possibly manage, I suppose they mean this: The purpose of the inquiries was legitimate, it's just performing them is not. So what does it mean if merely the purpose is legitimate? Did this official just try to let off these NSA-analysts because "the ends justified the means" ?? Not that it matters that much to me any way, because I am one of those filthy foreigners that doesn't have any right to any privacy whatsoever in the eyes of the NSA and a worryingly large percentage of US citizens cheering them on for that, because it is not them--ehm I mean because it is their job (if you don't think too hard about it). There's so many people arguing, many people who are otherwise very reasonable, that it's somehow okay to utterly violate people's privacy (on an unprecedented global scale) for no other reason than they are foreigners. No other reason. Being foreign is enough that you decided my private life is somehow not my own. And of course that my government is doing it too! Except that they don't have the budget or the unique position in internet infrastructure to violate privacy on such a global scale. But they do still try. And I won't let that slide or cheer them on for it either, just because they're doing it to "other" people.