NSA's Vast Surveillance Powers Extend Far Beyond Counterterrorism, Despite Misleading Government Cla

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/11-10

NSA's Vast Surveillance Powers Extend Far Beyond Counterterrorism, Despite Misleading Government Claims
by Trevor Timm
Published on Monday, November 11, 2013 by Deeplinks blog / EFF

Time and again we’ve seen the National Security Agency (NSA) defend its vast surveillance apparatus by invoking the spectre of terrorism, discussing its spying powers as a method to keep America safe. Yet, the truth is that counterterrorism is only a fraction of their far broader authority to seek “foreign intelligence information,” a menacing sounding term that actually encapsulates all sorts of innocuous, everyday conversation.

~snip~

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, NSA is given a mandate for collecting "foreign intelligence information" but this is not a very substantive limitation, and certainly does not restrict the NSA to counterterrorism—rather, it is defined to include "information with respect to a foreign power ... that relates to ... the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States."

Read that carefully for a minute. Anything “that relates to the foreign affairs of the United States.” Interpreted broadly, this can be political news, anything about economics, it doesn’t even have to involve a crime— basically anything besides the weather. Indeed, given the government penchant for warped and distorting the definitions of words in secret, we wouldn’t be surprised if the government would argue that weather could fall under the umbrella of “foreign intelligence information” too.

After all, government lawyers have managed to convince the secret FISA court that “relevant to” an investigation it no limitation at all – rather, it can encompass records of every call made in, to or from the United States. It seems unlikely that the government would interpret “relates to … the conduct of foreign affairs” to be any narrower.