Sadly, things are not often so cut and dry. What are you feelings about spying that is ostensibly international but nonetheless collects a potentially large, t

Sadly, things are not often so cut and dry. What are you feelings about spying that is ostensibly international but nonetheless collects a potentially large, though unknowable, amount of intimate domestic communication? I ask because that is exactly the kind of thing that happens with the "Foreign Intelligence" programs Snowden leaked. > [...] Section 702 of FISA Amendments Act of 2008, is labeled "Procedures For Targeting Certain Persons Outside The United States Other Than United States Persons." Going on name alone, that sounds like the opposite of a license for the NSA to collect private messages between Americans. > Not necessarily. > [...] > Through those spying programs, it is possible that American-to-American email could hit an overseas server and be pulled into NSA databases even though those emails are not the target of NSA searches. The law does not prohibit this kind of "incidental" collection of Americans’ communications, as long as it was part of an otherwise valid collection of non-Americans’ information, said Stephen Vladeck, American University national security law professor. > Government reports, leaks and a scathing 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion offer more proof that the NSA cannot separate out communications between Americans from the emails involving a foreigner. "NSA’s knowing acquisition of tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications through its Upstream collection is a cause of concern for the court," wrote FISC Judge John D. Bates in the declassified opinion. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/09/edward-snowden/fact-checking-john-olivers-interview-edward-snowde/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/09/...