Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 24, 2013 16:43:18 GMT -6
from www.theGuardian.com
Among its many abuses, the NSA has the capability to take a screenshot of anyone's email box, and can thus determine who that person is receiving email from.
Declassified rulings now expose this, and document how such practices were determined to be illegal and unconstitutional in 2011.
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/nsa-illegally-collected-thousands-emails-court
NSA illegally collected thousands of emails
before FISA court halted program
Declassified court ruling from 2011 found government 'disclosed substantial misrepresentation' of data collection program
by Spencer Ackerman
"The secretive court that oversees surveillance programs found in 2011 that the National Security Agency illegally collected tens of thousands of emails between Americans in violation of the fourth amendment to the US constitution.
The foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court ruling stemmed from what intelligence officials told reporters on Wednesday was a complex technical problem, not an intentional violation of American civil liberties.
In his 86-page opinion, declassified on Wednesday, Judge John Bates wrote that the government informed the court that the "volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe".
The ruling is one of three documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and comes amid growing public and congressional concern over the scope of NSA surveillance programs.
An intelligence official who would not be identified publicly described the problem to reporters during a conference call on Wednesday.
"If you have a webmail email account, like Gmail or Hotmail, you know that if you open up your email program, you will get a screenshot of some number of emails that are sitting in your inbox, the official said.
"Those are all transmitted across the internet as one communication. For technological reasons, the NSA was not capable of breaking those down, and still is not capable, of breaking those down into their individual components."
Among its many abuses, the NSA has the capability to take a screenshot of anyone's email box, and can thus determine who that person is receiving email from.
Declassified rulings now expose this, and document how such practices were determined to be illegal and unconstitutional in 2011.
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/nsa-illegally-collected-thousands-emails-court
NSA illegally collected thousands of emails
before FISA court halted program
Declassified court ruling from 2011 found government 'disclosed substantial misrepresentation' of data collection program
by Spencer Ackerman
"The secretive court that oversees surveillance programs found in 2011 that the National Security Agency illegally collected tens of thousands of emails between Americans in violation of the fourth amendment to the US constitution.
The foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court ruling stemmed from what intelligence officials told reporters on Wednesday was a complex technical problem, not an intentional violation of American civil liberties.
In his 86-page opinion, declassified on Wednesday, Judge John Bates wrote that the government informed the court that the "volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe".
The ruling is one of three documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and comes amid growing public and congressional concern over the scope of NSA surveillance programs.
An intelligence official who would not be identified publicly described the problem to reporters during a conference call on Wednesday.
"If you have a webmail email account, like Gmail or Hotmail, you know that if you open up your email program, you will get a screenshot of some number of emails that are sitting in your inbox, the official said.
"Those are all transmitted across the internet as one communication. For technological reasons, the NSA was not capable of breaking those down, and still is not capable, of breaking those down into their individual components."