U.S. Outlines N.S.A.’s Culling of Data for All Domestic Calls

New York Times ^ | July 31, 2013 | CHARLIE SAVAGE

[lbryce]

The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as a newly leaked N.S.A. document surfaced showing how the agency spies on Web browsing and other Internet activity abroad.

Together, the new round of disclosures shed even more light on the scope of the United States government’s secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and debate by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the newly declassified documents related to the domestic phone logging program at the start of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic. Simultaneously, The Guardian published a still-classified 32-page presentation leaked by Mr. Snowden that describes the N.S.A.'s XKeyscore program, which mines Internet browsing information that the agency is apparently vacuuming up at 150 network sites around the world.

The documents released by the government, meanwhile, include an April ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported a secondary order — also leaked by Mr. Snowden — requiring a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all of its customers’ phone logs for a three-month period.

It said the government may access the logs only when an executive branch official determines that there are “facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the number searched is associated with terrorism.

The releases also included two formerly classified briefing papers to Congress from 2009 and 2011, when the provision of the Patriot Act that the court relied on to issue that order was up for reauthorization. The papers outlined the bulk collection of “metadata” logging all domestic phone calls and e-mails of Americans

[lbryce]

Please. No feigned histrionics of shock and awe. Obama is infallible. Nothing he has done, could ever do would make any difference to the American people. Don't you get it? He's black. He's the first black president. Being black makes him impervious to anything, everything. It's an entitlement thing, this being black is.

[Carry_Okie]

The logs are just the look-up table for the calls they’ve stored and plan to transfer to the Utah Data Center. The logs just make searching the stored calls easier.

[American in Israel]

Bad when your government is more afraid of your phone calls to the pizza parlor than those making war on you.

[BenLurkin]

Bush the Younger set the table for this.

[PghBaldy]

You are right. I would go back even further though to every President of my lifetime has expanded government authority.

[Carry_Okie]

Bad when your government is more afraid of your phone calls to the pizza parlor than those making war on you.

Pizza, no cheese!

Where's Belushi when you need him?