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In reply to the discussion: EXCLUSIVE: Ordinary Web users far outnumber foreign targets in conversations intercepted by the NSA [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)More than 1,000 distinct minimization terms appear in the files, attempting to mask the identities of possible, potential and probable U.S. persons, along with the names of U.S. beverage companies, universities, fast-food chains and Web-mail hosts.
Some of them border on the absurd, using titles that could apply to only one man. A minimized U.S. president-elect begins to appear in the files in early 2009, and references to the current minimized U.S. president appear 1,227 times in the following four years.
Even so, unmasked identities remain in the NSAs files, and the agencys policy is to hold on to incidentally collected U.S. content, even if it does not appear to contain foreign intelligence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html