NSA Collected US Emails With No Ties to Terror

CRIEnglish ^ | 08/22/2013 | Liu Ranran

[TexGrill]

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had improperly collected thousands of emails from Americans with no ties to terrorism over three years before a special court ruled it unconstitutional, according to court opinions declassified by intelligence officials on Wednesday.

The release of three secret U.S. court opinions came amid escalating public debates over the intelligence community's surveillance programs, which were first revealed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden in June.

Under the program targeting foreign Internet traffic, the NSA collected as many as 56,000 emails and other communications by Americans starting from 2008, but failed to effectively filter out all the communications between Americans.

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was notified in 2011 of the agency's improper collection of emails and other on- line communications.

"For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe," John D. Bates, a judge on the surveillance court, wrote in his opinion in October, 2011.

[TexGrill]

No joke, but I met some pink mafia thugs last summer who claimed they were friendly with the US Embassy in Beijing and they had access to my emails. They wanted to promote gay marriage globally and considered me a threat. I didn't take them seriously but as the PRISM story broke, I started thinking about those folks again. I heard there's a Website where you can check to see which emails had been scanned by PRISM, it would be interesting to see if my emails in Beijing were indeed reviewed by some unfriendly American eyes.

[gaijin]

[MeshugeMikey]

Its is MY JOB to keep "the peace"

[DManA]

Give us more power, we’ll solve all your problems : Satan

[ThunderSleeps]

More evidence of their “easier to get forgiveness than permission” mentality. You know that somewhere, right this second, they are collecting internet traffic, emails, texts, and call records from completely innocent Americans. I would bet you anything you care to name that is going on.

[mylife]

Did they get Nidal Hasan’s Emails?

[KittenClaws]

The more I hear about this, the more I see deflection..something the powers are handing us to be outraged about..

We have bigger fish to fry. When we are done, we’ll take care of the unconstitutional usurper.

[OneWingedShark]

The more I hear about this, the more I see deflection..something the powers are handing us to be outraged about..
We have bigger fish to fry.

The routine abridgement of the 4th (and 5th, and 6th) amendments of millions of Americans is not a small thing… So, what do you think it's deflecting from? What's the bigger fish?

[jsanders2001]

I wonder how many of FR’s emails and posts they have...probably all of them. Probably any conservative individual that doesn’t approve of the King’ behavior.

[Hotlanta Mike]

Did they get Nidal Hasan’s Emails?

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No, but you can bet they got Mitt Romney’s, John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s among others...