June 24, 2013

NSA Part 1: The NSA blanket surveillance data mining scandal

On June 6th, 2013, The Guardian and The Washington Post released classified documents on that were leaked by the NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden. The documents revealed potentially massive privacy oversteps by the NSA, and if true, would be in clear violation of the 4th amendment. The leaked documents revealed two secret NSA intelligence programs that gather information on American citizens. The first program collects meta data on all phone calls made by Verizon customers, including American citizens. It was shown that this program has been active for the last 7 years. Meta data does not include the audio of the phone call , but rather data about the call, such as the location that call was made from, the duration of the call, and to whom the call was made.

The second revelation revealed the secret NSA program called PRISM. The leaked PRISM document show that the NSA "collects information directly from the servers" of nine major tech companies, which are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, Youtube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. This information includes emails, chats, video, voices, videos, photos, stored sata, VoIP, file transfers, video conferencing, notifications of target activity - logins, etc., online social networking details, and other special requests. A timeline which depicts when each company joined PRISM shows that Microsoft joined in 2007, and over several years was followed by Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, Youtube, Skype, AOL, and Apple.

Since the leak, all of these companies have released statements denying that the NSA has direct access to their servers. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have admitted that they do share information with the NSA, but only after their legal teams carefully look over each individual request. In a move of transparency, Facebook and Microsoft have even released the number of NSA requests that they have received in the 2nd half of 2012.

This story has ignited a firestorm in the US media. This is a story that every major news network and thousands of bloggers are covering. If true, these revelations are at best in violation of the 4th amendment, and at worst, they threaten the very fabric of American society.

Over the last week, I have I have been consumed by this story, and in an attempt to further my own understanding I decided to write this article. In my research, I have compiled over a 100 references including PRISM slides, the Snowden interview, interviews by government officials, ex NSA senior members, senators, opinion pieces, and dozens of editorials.

This article turned out to be a lot longer than I intended it to be. For the sake of readability, I have broken it into 3 different parts:

Part I)  The Evidence - What is the NSA actually doing?

 Part II) The legal argument - A look at the 4th amendment, FISA, and The Patriot Act.

 Part III) Does data mining save lives and should we let the government spy on us?


Part I:  The Evidence - What is the NSA actually doing?

The national security agency (NSA) is a division of the military with oversight by the executive branch, congress, and the FISA court, known as FISC.  The executive order 12333 issued December 4th, 1981 clearly states that the responsibilities of the NSA are to "collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes to support national and departmental missions."  The NSA works with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  These agencies have similar goals, can share information, but operate independently.

Since the leaks, there have been a deluge of conflicting reports from a variety of different sources.  President Obama has stated on record that the NSA does not have the ability to listen to phone calls.  Interviews of NSA whistle-blowers seem to directly contradict this.  Where is the truth in all of this?  Two mutually exclusive ideas both cannot be true.  There are only three possibilities:  Obama is lying, the NSA whistle blowers are lying, or both groups are both lying.  In this section I will do my best to discover to discover the truth.

A major hurdle in this attempt is the fact that I do not have access to classified NSA documents.  To uncover the extent of the NSA data mining and surveillance programs, like most Americans, my evidence is limited to the testimony and accounts given from interviews and public statements made by people involved in the situation.  This may come from NSA whistle blowers who had first hand experience of what the NSA does, by congressmen on intelligence committees who have attended close door sessions with high ranking NSA officials and have been briefed on classified information, or from high ranking NSA officials.

Here are the names and groups of every source that I included in this article:
  • Primary resources:  The 5 leaked PRISM slides.
  • Ex-NSA or FBI whistle blowers: Edward Snowden, William Binney, Thomas Drake, J. Kirk Wiebe, and Tim Clemente.
  • US Senators on intelligence committees:  Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen.Mark Udall, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and Sen. Loretta Sanchez.
  • Former internet service provider employees:  Mark Klein (AT&T).
  • Official statements made by internet service providers:  Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, and Apple.
  • High ranking NSA or FBI officials or spokespeople:  General Keith Alexander, Head of NSA James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller, President Obama, and NSA public affairs director Judith Emmel.

The 5 leaked Prism slides

Edward Snowden leaked 41 slides to the Guardian and the Washington Post, but they have only published 5 of those slides. one of which is a title slide.  Here are the first 4 slides, and the 5th slide that was published several days later.  The 5 slides reveal the presence of the NSA program called PRISM.  The presentation appears to be of made by a mid level NSA operative who was briefing lower level operators on what resources and program they had access to and should use to collect intelligence data.

The first slide tells the intended audience that they should use two methods to obtain data:  from an upstream source to collect information directly from fiber cables and from PRISM, which gives them access to the servers of internet service providers such as Microsoft or Google.  The exact nature of the access through the PRISM program is not clarified.  The text on the slide reads:  "PRISM:  collection directly from the servers of internet service providers."

The second slide shows a timeline of when the 9 tech companies joined the PRISM program. Microsoft was the first to join in 2007 and Apple was the last to join in 2012.

The third slide shows what type of information they can obtain through the PRISM. From each tech company an NSA operative can expect to receive emails, chats, voice, videos, photos, stored ata, VoIP, File transfers, video conferencing, logins, social networking details, and other special requests.

The fourth slide depicts the amount of global internet traffic that is routed through the US internet hubs.

It is very interesting to note that both the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and the Post’s Barton Gellman have made it clear that the rest of the PowerPoint is "dynamite stuff … which we’re not going to be seeing any time soon." “If you saw all the slides you wouldn’t publish them,” wrote Gellman on Twitter. If the slides contain very specific technical content, I do not think they should be published. However, if they contain more general information about the extent of NSA wiretapping than publishing them would do a great deal to advance this conversation.


NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is 29 years old and worked for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii.  He reportedly had a six-figure salary, rented a very nice house in Hawaii, and his girlfriend was a model.  By all means, he had a very comfortable life.  Last week he decided to leave behind his old life, and become a NSA whistleblower.  Snowden released classified documents that revealed the Verizon meta data mining and PRISM programs.  His interview with Glenn Greenwald reveals a lot of information that is not contained in the PRISM slides. 

Here are some select quotes from Snowden's interview with Glenn Greenwald:
(full transcript here)
On what types of practices the NSA employs:
Snowden:  "...the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting you're communications to do so."
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail."
On his motivation to become a whistle blower and why he decided to reveal his identity, instead of remaining anonymous:
Snowden: "I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. When you are subverting the power of government that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy and if you do that in secret consistently as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took. 
"I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide, the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.' And I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, 'I didn't change these, I didn't modify the story. This is the truth; this is what's happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this.'"
More on his motives, and if he wanted to, could he have caused damage to the US:
Snowden:  "Oh absolutely. Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia; they always have an open door as we do. I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth."

"If I had just wanted to harm the US? You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention. I think for anyone making that argument they need to think, if they were in my position and you live a privileged life, you're living in Hawaii, in paradise, and making a ton of money, 'What would it take you to leave everything behind?'"
On June 17th, Snowden performed a live question and answer session on the Guardian website, and his answers provided more valuable insight behind his motivations and the technical capabilities that the NSA has.  Here is one particularly telling exchange:
Question:  Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?
Snowden: The reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.


NSA whistle blowers: Williams Binney, Thomas Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe

In 2001, three senior level intelligence agency Whistle-blowers, Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe, who have over 100 years experience between them came out with similar revelations to the recent Snowden leak. They claimed that the actions of the NSA were unconstitutional - but they were ignored by the media.  Snowden was able to provide irrefutable proof that the NSA was doing things that would shock the majority of Americans.  By doing this, Snowden has succeeded where Drake, Binney, and Kirk failed, because he forced the conversation and ignited a national public debate in the process.

 When asked if Snowden did the right thing by going public with classified information, Binney described his personal efforts to raise alarms over privacy issues to his superiors in the NSA.  He said that for 7 years he was repeatedly ignored and that he witnessed the power of the NSA continue to grow.
Binney: "We tried to stay for the better part of seven years inside the government trying to get the government to recognize the unconstitutional, illegal activity that they were doing and openly admit that and devise certain ways that would be constitutionally and legally acceptable to achieve the ends they were really after. And that just failed totally because no one in Congress or — we couldn't get anybody in the courts, and certainly the Department of Justice and inspector general's office didn't pay any attention to it. And all of the efforts we made just produced no change whatsoever. All it did was continue to get worse and expand."
Binney also claimed that he developed a prototype of the program that allows the NSA to sweep up almost infinite amounts of information, told the New Yorker's Jame Mayer in 2011 that he regretted his input to the NSAs spying efforts:
Binney: “I should apologize to the American people,” he said. “It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.”
In another interview, Binney described a listening device operated by Narus, another private NSA contractor, that can analyze 1,250,000 emails that contain 1,000-characters every second. That comes to over 100 billion emails a day.

Regarding the Verizon meta data program, Binney said the following:
Binney: “Narus is the one thing that makes it all possible. They probably pick up 60 to 80 percent of the data going over the [U.S.] network.”
On the Narus technology, he added,
Binney: “[Narus] reconstructs everything on the line and then passes it off to NSA for storage” and later analysis. That includes everything, he said, including email, cellphone calls, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calls such as those made on Skype.
However, Narus cannot scoop up everything. Binney said,
Binney: “Even though there’s so many Narus devices collecting on the Net, they don’t get it all,” he explained. “So if they go to the ISPs with a court order, they fill in the gaps from the collection on Narus."
To the Daily Caller, Binney described the number of American phone calls the NSA records.
Binney:  "The NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. "They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that's what they record."


Former FBI counter terrorism agent: Tim Clemente

As recently highlighted by Glenn Greenwald, in May 2013, CNN's Erin Burnett recently interviewed former FBI agent Tim Clemente on the FBI's ability to wiretap American citizens.  Here is their exchange:
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."
Clemente says that if the FBI wanted to, it could go back and find out what was said in a telephone conversation.  According to my understanding of time, the only way to "go back" to listen to a phone call is if the phone call was already recorded.


US senators on the intelligence committee:  Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Mark Udall

The congressional intelligence committee has oversight over the NSA, and members of the committee are supposed to be regularly briefed by members of the NSA.  Two senators in particular, Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Mark Udall have been very active in task of understanding and overseeing NSA practices.  They are told classified information regarding NSA activities that American citizens do not have access to.  They recently write a joint letter to President Obama, it reads:
Wyden and Udall:  “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.  There's virtually nothing that limits the government's authority to collect here, medical records, financial records, library records, gun purchase records.  This basically is a huge sweep of individual records and it can supersede other laws.  What we've seen in one issue after another is essentially the practice of secret law, where there is a different interpretation used by the government of the United States than a plain reading of the statute would suggest, you can't have much of a debate with the public if there's that big a gap between what the public thinks a law means and how the executive branch is interpreting it."


US senator on the homeland security committee:  Senator Loretta Sanchez
Senator Loretta Sanchez is on the homeland security committee, which is tasked with providing oversight for the department of home security.  Following the Snowden leak, the homeland security committee was briefed by several mid-level NSA and FBI operatives.  The operatives briefed the senators through the classified details of various intelligence programs that are in use.  Following the briefing, Senator Loretta Sanchez was interviewed on c-span, and said that the intelligence operatives stressed several times that the FISA and Patriot Act have made everything that the NSA has done perfectly legal.  Although she could not mentioned any specifics, she appeared to be shocked at the extent of the NSA intelligence gathering, here is a direct quote: (and here is her full interview)
Sanchez:  "What we learned in there is significantly more than what is in the media today.  I cannot speak to what we learned in there.  And I don't know if there are other leaks, if there is more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up.  But I will tell you, that I believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg."


Representaive Jerrod Nadler

In a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, seemed to inadvertently catch FBI Director Robert Mueller in a lie.  The day before interviewing Mueller, Nalder attended a closed door classified meeting, and asked the same question in that meeting as he did Mueller the following day.  He received two different answers, and communicates his confusion to Mueller.  Mueller is not able to clarify, here is their exchange:
Nadler:  If you get information from meta data, and you think a phone number looks suspicion, do you need a new warrant to get the contents of that phone call?
Mueller:  You need at least a national security letter.  All you have is a telephone number, you need a letter to get the subscriber information, and if you needed to want more, you would need a specific order from the FISA court to get the phone call from that individual.
Nadler:  Is the answer you just gave me classified in any way?
Mueller: No.
Nadler:  Now, we heard precisely the opposite at a meeting yesterday.  We heard that you could get specific information from that telephone simply based on an analyst's decision, that you didn't need a warrant.
Mueller does not provide any further clarification, and redirects the conversation.  I think it is very peculiar that Rep. Nalder would hear two different stories from two different high ranking officials.



U.S. Director of National Intelligence: James Clapper

At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden questioned the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.  Wyden informed Clapper's office a day in advance that he would be asking this question.  James Clapper had 24 hours to consider the answer to this question.  Here is their exchange:
Wyden:  Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions Americans?
Clapper:  No Sir, not wittingly.  There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps collect, but not wittingly.
From what we now know, Clapper's response is lie, and appears to be guilty of perjury.  Expressing frustration, Senator Wyden had the following to say after hearing Clapper's response:
 "You cannot have strong oversight if intelligence officials don't give you straight answers."
 

Director of the National Security Agency:  4 Star general Keith Alexander

In 2012, the Armed Services Committee member, Georgia Representative Hank Johnson directly questioned NSA director general Keith Alexander regarding the NSA's capabilities. Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said:
Alexander:  “No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States.” He added that “nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information”.
When asked about the specifics of the NSA's technical capabilities, General Alexander said "no" across the board:
Johnson: Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens’ emails?
Alexander: No.
Johnson: Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cell phone conversations?
Alexander: No.
Johnson: Google searches?
Alexander: No.
Johnson: Text messages?
Alexander: No.
Johnson: Amazon.com orders?
Alexander: No.
Johnson: Bank records?
Alexander: No. 
Here is a nice complication of the above videos of Keith Alexander clearly lying to congress (Thanks to TYT, it starts at 7 minute mark):


Representative Mike Rogers and NSA spokeswomen:  Judith Emmel

 Representative Mike Rogers and NSA spokeswomen Judith Emmel have both come to the defense of the NSA.  In recent statements they had the following to say:
Rogers:  "The NSA “is not listening to Americans’ phone calls or monitoring their e-mails.  If it did, it is illegal. It is breaking the law, I think (Americans) think there's this mass surveillance of what you're saying on your phone call and what you're typing in your e-mails. That is just not happening.”
Emmel:  "The NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."


President of the Unites States:  President Obama

 In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama defended the NSA, said that no one is listening to your phone calls:
Obama:  Point number one, if you are a US person, then the NSA is not listening to your phone calls, and it is not targeting your emails unless it has an individualized court order.  Program number one, called the twenty fifteen program, what that does, is it gets data from the service providers, like Verizon, in bulk, and basically you have call pairs, you have my telephone number connecting with your number.  There are no names, there is no content in that database.  All you have are phone numbers, and when and where they were made.  Now if the FBI wants to get a contact, it has to go to the FISA court with probable cause and obtain a warrant."
The president suggests that the only way the FBI can identify who a phone number belongs to is to go through a FISA court.  I wonder if it is possible to identify the owner of each phone number using the yellow pages.


An internal talking points memo:

There have been several reoccurring points made by high ranking NSA spokespeople.  Here is a copy of their internally circulated talking points memo, which contains many of the points made above by James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Judith Emme, Mike rogers, and even President Obama.  This article on techdirt addresses and refutes every talking point contained in the memo.



Former AT&T employee:  Mark Klein

In 2006, a former AT&T technician Mark Klein witnessed domestic voice and internet traffic being surreptitiously "diverted" by the NSA through a "splitter cabinet" to secure room 641A in one of the company's San Francisco facilities. The room was accessible only to NSA-cleared technicians.  He said the following:
Klein:  "AT&T had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a spot where fiber optic cables enter the U.S."
This is probably related to the Narus program that William Binney described.


Official statements by ISPs:  Facebook, Google, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo

 After the initial reports regarding PRISM came out, the major tech companies quickly denied that the NSA has direct access to their servers.  Here are their public statements.
Facebook made the following statement:
"We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law."
Google said:
”Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data. Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully.
 Microsoft said:
We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.
AOL said:
"We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."
Yahoo said:
"Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."
In 2008, Yahoo went to court and argued that a order violated its users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court called that worry “overblown.” Google also went to court, but was ruled against.  Ron Bell, the Yahoo's general counsel, made the following statement:
"The notion that Yahoo gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users' records is categorically false."

So what can we safely assume is true?

The NSA records almost all calls made in the US, including most over the Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp networks.

The NSA collects digital information directly from the internet service providers (ISPs) using PRISM. In order to use PRISM, the NSA has to have their request approved through the FISA court. If the request is accepted, they file a request with the ISP, and their lawyers look it over. Google has stated that they have denied certain requests. If the companies approve the request, they transfer the files to a secure FTP server, and the NSA can then download the files.

To date there have been 77,000 intelligent reports that cite PRISM. It is not clear how many individual requests or personal accounts are included in each request. In 2012, only 1789 electronic surveillance applications were approved by the FISA court. Based on these numbers, it is clear that the majority of PRISM requests do not go through the FISA court. Assuming that for PRISM is in fact bound by the law, then every time it is used to make a request for records pertaining to a US citizen it has to go through the FISA court, and that the majority of PRISM requests are to obtain user accounts of non US-citizens.

The statements made by Facebook and Microsoft are in line with the 77,000 figure made above. In the Facebook statement, they claim that in the last 6 months of 2012, they received 10,000 requests for 19,000 Facebook accounts. Microsoft has stated similar requests, over the same 6 month period they received 7,000 requests for 32,000 personal accounts. Without knowing how many requests and personal accounts are included in each report, these numbers appear to be in agreement with the above 77,000 reports figure.

Boundless informant is the NSA's parent program, that all intelligence information gets pooled into. PRISM is only one channel out of many to collect information. According to a report, Boundless Information collects 100 billion surveillance global records a month, which extrapolates to 1.2 trillion total records in a year. Out of the 100 billion monthly billion surveillance records, 97 billion are taken from outside the US, and 3 billion are taken from computer networks located inside the US. That extrapolates to 36 billion records taken from within the US, or over 100 million records every single day.

It is not clear how many of the 100 million daily records that are obtained from within the US networks contain information about US citizens. It is possible that information regarding foreigners are contained on servers located in the US.

The picture that is forming illustrates that NSA gets the majority of its global digital intelligence by recording information from other countries that is networked to the United States in fiber optic cables that literally run through the ocean. This program is called Narus, and is responsible for obtaining 60-80% of all digital information. The information gaps are then filled in with PRISM by requesting information directly from the service providers. Once this information is obtained, it is then analyzed by contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and programs called Boundless Informant.

There appears to be two narratives that are being told by two different groups. In one group, you have ex-NSA whistle blowers, internal PRISM documents, and senators on the intelligence committee saying that the NSA records everything, and that operators have the technical ability to access nearly all of this information, all without a warrant. In the other group, you have the president, senior level NSA and FBI members, and NSA spokespeople who all claim the NSA does not record phone calls, requires a warrant to access any of the information they do records, and has strong oversight.

I believe that General Alexander, James Clapper, and Robert Mueller have clear incentives to preserve and expand their agencies by purposely misleading congress and the US people. Simply put, I believe that they are lying to congressional oversight committees and to the US people.

A bullet point summary of what appears to be true:

So after all this testimony, statements, and interviews, here is what we can safely assume is true:
  • The NSA has a central database that contains phone call meta data, the contents of phone cells,
    emails, chats, voice, videos, photos, stored data, VoIP, File transfers, video conferencing, logins, social networking details, and other special requests.  It is not clear if they record this information for every single American, Americans on their watch list, or communications with foreigners.  They have the ability to capture 100 billion emails a day, but probably don't come close to this.
  • The NSA obtains the majority of this information by recording information as it comes into the US from under sea fiber optic cables.  This program is probably called Narus, and is responsible for 60-80% of the information collected by the NSA.
  • For the remaining 20-40% of information, the NSA can use obtain information directly from internet service providers through the PRISM program.  PRISM is only responsible for 1 in 7 intelligence reports.  To date 77,000 intelligent reports cite PRISM.
  • PRISM requires approval the secret FISA court.  If their request is approved, the NSA then contacts the ISP, and the ISP legal team scrutinizes the request.  If they deem it to be legal, they then upload the requests information into a FTP server, and the NSA can download the file. 
  • Boundless informant is a program that is in charge of analyzing the 100 billion records every month, 3 billion of which originate from inside the US networks.
  • It is not clear if operators have the legal authority to access the central NSA database.  According to Snowden, operators have the technological ability to look up anybodies records at anytime, and can wiretap anybody - even the president.
  • It is not clear what type of power oversight committees have.  According to Snowden, the performed audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications.  And that the number of audited queries is only 5% of the total that are performed.
  • Congressional lawmakers do not have functional oversight.  They are completely dependent on what the NSA tells them, and they have no way of knowing if the information they are being told is true or not.
These revelations are based on only what has been published and is available in the media.  I wonder what information is contained in the remaining 36 slides that remain unpublished.  Is this related to Lorette Sanchez's proverbial iceberg?


Additional NSA and FBI practices:

In addition to the recent revelations, it has been known for many years that the FBI and NSA have developed or are developing many other intelligence gathering programs, here is what I could find:

(Thanks to reddit user notkosok for his links)

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