US NSA Gives Israel Raw Intelligence on US Citizens (Chamberlain)
Jacob Chamberlain writes at Commondreams.org
The National Security Agency openly shares unfiltered intelligence files with the Israeli government, according to a classified document leaked to the Guardian newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
As the Guardian reports Wednesday, the NSA memorandum details an "intelligence-sharing agreement" between the two countries and shows that the "US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens" to Israeli intelligence.
According to the Guardian, the agreement places "no legally binding limits" on how Israel could explore or handle the data.
"The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet," writes Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, the team of journalists behind the report. "The intelligence community calls this process 'minimization,' but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state."
The Guardian published the NSA memorandum in full
here.
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http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/intelligence-citizens-chamberlain.html