Declassified Documents: NSA Wanted To Collect Geolocation Data

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/declassifed-documents-nsa-sought-to-collect-mobile-location-data-a-934514.html



Apple got into trouble two years ago for tracking geolocations of its iPhone users. Is the NSA doing the same?

Declassified Documents: NSA Wanted To Collect Geolocation Data
By Christian Stöcker
November 19, 2013 – 06:17 PM

At the very latest, it's been clear since the scandal surrounding spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone that when American intelligence services comment on their practices, every single word has meaning. If an official says, for example, "We don't do that and we will not do so in the future," it could well mean, "We did that up until now."

In that light, one statement written by the NSA in secret documents declassified in redacted form by the US government on Monday seems of particular interest. In the 2010 document, a staff member for a US senator on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the agency to "Please clarify when NSA can collect FISA geolocation data, either through telephony or Internet."

In other words, the senator wanted to know if, in addition to telephone and Internet metadata, the US intelligence agency was also tracking the location of everybody who has a mobile phone or Internet connection. FISA is a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits US intelligence agencies to undertake certain types of eavesdropping and data collection within the scope of the law.

~snip~

But in this case, the addition of the concrete program -- referring to the FISA program of collecting telephone and Internet metadata -- is at the very least odd. The reason is that it opens up the possibility that the NSA may long have been collecting geolocation data based on other legal bases. The answer also includes another potentially explosive sentence right at the end:

"NSA is, however, exploring the possibility of acquiring such mobility data under this program in the near future under the authority currently granted by the Court."