According to (non-Snowden) documents gathered through a FOIA request by reporter Charlie Savage of The New York Times, the NSA moved its email surveillance program offshore to reduce oversight:
When the National Security Agency's bulk collection of records about Americans' emails came to light in 2013, the government conceded the program's existence but said it had shut down the effort in December 2011 for "operational and resource reasons."
While that particular secret program stopped, newly disclosed documents show that the N.S.A. had found a way to create a functional equivalent. The shift has permitted the agency to continue analyzing social links revealed by Americans' email patterns, but without collecting the data in bulk from American telecommunications companies — and with less oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
[...] The newly disclosed information about the email records program is contained in a report by the N.S.A.'s inspector general that was obtained by The New York Times through a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. One passage lists four reasons that the N.S.A. decided to end the email program and purge previously collected data. Three were redacted, but the fourth was uncensored. It said that "other authorities can satisfy certain foreign intelligence requirements" that the bulk email records program "had been designed to meet."
Two sources replaced domestic surveillance of emails:
[Continues after the break.]
The report explained that there were two other legal ways to get such data. One was the collection of bulk data that had been gathered in other countries, where the N.S.A.'s activities are largely not subject to regulation by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and oversight by the intelligence court. Because of the way the Internet operates, domestic data is often found on fiber optic cables abroad.
The N.S.A. had long barred analysts from using Americans' data that had been swept up abroad, but in November 2010 it changed that rule, documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden have shown. The inspector general report cited that change to the N.S.A.'s internal procedures.
The other replacement source for the data was collection under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which permits warrantless surveillance on domestic soil that targets specific noncitizens abroad, including their new or stored emails to or from Americans. "Thus," the report said, these two sources "assist in the identification of terrorists communicating with individuals in the United States, which addresses one of the original reasons for establishing" the bulk email records program.
Timothy Edgar, a privacy official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations who now teaches at Brown University, said the explanation filled an important gap in the still-emerging history of post-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance. "The document makes it clear that N.S.A. is able to get all the Internet metadata it needs through foreign collection," he said. "The change it made to its procedures in 2010 allowed it to exploit metadata involving Americans. Once that change was made, it was no longer worth the effort to collect Internet metadata inside the United States, in part because doing so requires N.S.A. to deal with" restrictions by the intelligence court.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 22 2015, @03:22PM
Nor did it stop the attack in Mali. The government really has no interest in stopping terrorism. They are hell bent on building a police state, and have no concern for terrorism. Terrorists are just the boogeymen used to scare us into submission.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 2) by albert on Monday November 23 2015, @02:25AM
You seem to assume that all the terrorists who were tracked and then killed with bombs and missiles were... in permanent retirement? They were just going to relax and reminisce about old times?
This is not a sound line of thinking.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 24 2015, @01:13AM
That's just for show. If it costs a few lives and a few billion dollars to gain control, big whoop. It's not like it's their lives or money.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @04:38PM
No matter where they get the data from or who they ask to get it, they are still violating the constitution. To say that the government can simply ask companies or other governments to do things that would violate the constitution if our government did them is insane and would make the constitution rather useless; while these third parties are carrying out these tasks, they become a de facto part of our government, and they cannot violate the constitution. If they do violate the constitution, then our own government, and possibly the companies that complied with these actions, should be punished severely.
These silly legal 'tricks' won't work on any judge who is actually concerned with upholding the constitution. But the question is: How many judges are like that?
(Score: 1) by driverless on Monday November 23 2015, @04:06AM
No matter where they get the data from or who they ask to get it, they are still violating the constitution.
Probably not to a degree that can be used against them in court. Note that this isn't new, it's been going on since at least the 1970s (when it was first publicly revealed) and probably before then. What happens is that country A subcontracts the spying to country B (e.g. the US to the Canadians or UK, the UK to the US, and so on), and then they can swear on a stack of bibles that "we don't spy on our own citizens". They don't, they just get the other guys to do it for them and pass on the intercepted data. Unless you phrase your question really, really, really carefully (and I'm not aware of anyone ever doing so in any hearings into intelligence agency abuse), they can stand there with a straight face and claim they're innocent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2015, @06:31AM
Clapper lied to congress committing perjury, nothing happened. These guys follow their doctine of too-big-to-fail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Sunday November 22 2015, @04:55PM
it's quite clear that there are no reasons to believe anything the TLAs say, so it sounds like we need to cull them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @07:43PM
Nobody except some voters want squeaky clean politicians that can't be controlled. If you're an amoral organization and you wanted to fund/support someone who would you support? Someone who would help you given the right $$$$ or arm-twisting, or someone who would "do what they think is right" no matter what?
Same goes for politicians - once you get a critical mass of dirty politicians guess what sort of colleagues/teammates they want around them? Who would you support if you were dirty and not stupid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23 2015, @12:15PM
How come when the Germans are caught spying on the US [theguardian.com], particularly after the holier-than-thou stance taken after the Merkel cell phone thing, that it doesn't even garner a fucking mention anywhere on this site, much less a story?
What sayeth ye Soylent Eurotard hypocrites?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 24 2015, @01:32AM
Weak troll. Lacked knowledge of the audience. I give it 2.5 out of 10.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday November 22 2015, @08:22PM
And by metadata, with regard to email, they mean full take. Text, attachments and all. Unless you encrypt it, they get it all.
This isn't a phone call, where pen register data (who called who) can be recorded without listening in on the voice.
Email travels as one data stream. You get the headers, and immediately behind those come the content.
The fiction that metadata only is collected is nonsense. And this Timothy Edgar clown who still parrots that word still can't be trusted.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday November 22 2015, @09:38PM
True, but a lot of people don't care about that. I've seen people say, "The NSA can read my emails if it keeps us safe." Freedom disappears quickly in countries filled with unprincipled cowards, as most are.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday November 22 2015, @11:32PM
countries? Try the civilized world.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday November 22 2015, @11:53PM
I don't follow. Mass surveillance is necessarily uncivilized and intolerable to me.