# NSA Emails
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 13, 2020, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679 "2020-05-13T00:29:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Sdowiat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sdowiat)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/1 "2020-05-13T00:29:25Z")
Two part question:
Is the NSA still collecting everyone’s emails? Would it save the country money if we encouraged everyone to just copy the NSA on their emails so that they get an unencrypted copy and don’t have to go to the trouble to cracking it, plus it would let them focus on the emails that they WEREN’T copied on because the problem areas likely lie in THOSE emails?
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/2 "2020-05-13T00:42:28Z")
They stopped in 2017, supposedly.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/3 "2020-05-13T14:39:45Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> They stopped in 2017, supposedly.
How would we know?
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### Author:  [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/4 "2020-05-13T15:14:34Z")
> [@Senegoid](#):
>
> How would we know?
Spy agencies never lie.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/5 "2020-05-13T15:44:13Z")
Read\* Edward Snowden’s book [Permanent Record](https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden/dp/1250237238). He explains in clear detail exactly how the NSA program worked.
And, no, it never collected everyone’s emails in the way you think.
\*I mean, seriously, read this book. Whatever your political persuasions are outside of outright crackpot you will learn a huge amount of valuable information about the way modern intelligence works. You can skip his childhood stuff. I certainly did.
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### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/6 "2020-05-13T16:08:47Z")
It is a misconception that the NSA collected and stored everyone’s emails. Collecting the content of emails or phone calls of Americans requires a warrant, whether they are suspected of a crime or of being an agent of a foreign power. Collecting the emails of foreigners for intelligence value is routine business, though nobody likely knows how many of those emails are collected.
There have clearly been abuses and mistakes in the collection of emails that have resulted in the intentional or unintentional interception of emails of innocent Americans, but the odds that the NSA has captured all your emails to Gramma and has them in a database for them to comb through at their leisure is so close to zero — but not exactly zero itself.
There was a program that collected metadata from a huge number of phone calls - who anyone called and when - including calls made to and from Americans. But that did not collect the content of the calls. That program was reformed a few years ago to end the bulk collection that data (which looked like phone bills, basically) and more recently the reformed program totally ended.
Right now Congress is debating the extension of the Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs these activities. Odds seem pretty good that there will be changes to these authorities to better protect Americans. But if you’re a non-American, good luck, you aren’t protected by these laws or reform proposals.
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/7 "2020-05-13T16:45:48Z")
Some say that there are agreements between allied nations the spy on the citizens of the others and then share those results to get around domestic restrictions.
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### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/8 "2020-05-13T18:21:58Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#):
>
> Some say that there are agreements between allied nations the spy on the citizens of the others and then share those results to get around domestic restrictions.
That is illegal. I’m certain there have been abuses of this, but make no mistake, the law is not so facile. The Bill of Rights and protection against unreasonable searches does not have a legal loophole for such end-runs.
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/9 "2020-05-14T03:59:29Z")
> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> That is illegal. I’m certain there have been abuses of this, but make no mistake, the law is not so facile. The Bill of Rights and protection against unreasonable searches does not have a legal loophole for such end-runs.
I can’t tell if you’re joking here… but this is the US Government we’re talking about. Intelligence, no less. You think the Constitution would stop them? Our laws didn’t matter much when Bush fabricated enemies out of thin air for us to attack, our laws didn’t much matter much when Obama butchered the First Amendment to shut down whistleblowers, or when he ordered a drone assassination of a US citizen. Our laws certainly don’t matter to the current cretin in chief. And which senator would stand up to them? (There have actually been a few who have objected to the fucked-up ness of these programs, but by and large warrantless wiretapping of Americans receives broad bipartisan support by the powers that be, under various acts vaguely related to terrorism, national security, etc. and renewed under different agencies and pet names every few years. Arguably, most everyday Americans don’t really care either.)
This particular revelation was one of Snowden’s findings:
[Five Eyes - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes), compromised of US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, trades information with one another to get around domestic spying restrictions. You tell us about our citizens, we’ll tell you about yours.
> [@](#):
>
> Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed that the FVEY has been spying on one another’s citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens.[7][8][9][10]
The citations 7-10 are:
> **[US and UK struck secret deal to allow NSA to 'unmask' Britons' personal data](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-deal-surveillance-personal-data)**
>
> • 2007 deal allows NSA to store previously restricted material• UK citizens not suspected of wrongdoing caught up in dragnet• Separate draft memo proposes US spying on 'Five-Eyes' allies
> **[Revealed: Australian spy agency offered to share data about ordinary citizens](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/revealed-australian-spy-agency-offered-to-share-data-about-ordinary-citizens)**
>
> • Secret 5-Eyes document shows surveillance partners discussing what data they can pool about their citizens• DSD indicated it could provide material without some privacy restraints imposed by other countries such as Canada• Medical, legal or...
> **[NSA 'offers intelligence to British counterparts to skirt UK law'](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jun/10/nsa-offers-intelligence-british-counterparts-blunkett)**
>
> David Blunkett says US security agency circumvents British law by offering data, rather than having it requested of them
[https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-security-britain/british-spy-agency-taps-cables-shares-with-u-s-nsa-guardian-idUKBRE95K10620130621](https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-security-britain/british-spy-agency-taps-cables-shares-with-u-s-nsa-guardian-idUKBRE95K10620130621)
The last article, Reuters, says:
> [@](#):
>
> NSA spokeswoman Judith Emmel rejected any suggestion the U.S. agency used the British to do things the NSA cannot do legally. Under U.S. law, the NSA must get authorization from a secret federal court to collect information either in bulk or on specific people.
That court she’s talking about is the [FISA court of secret, arbitrary justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#FISA_warrants). That’s right, that’s how much they love your rights: They’ll actually go through a charade of setting up a secret court with a secret judge to secretly bypass your warrant to get your email to gramma. Guess how many secret approvals they grant?
From 1970-2017, there have been 41,222 requests and 41,920 of them have been approved or modified. Only 85 were denied.
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/10 "2020-05-14T04:09:59Z")
> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> That is illegal. I’m certain there have been abuses of this, but make no mistake, the law is not so facile. The Bill of Rights and protection against unreasonable searches does not have a legal loophole for such end-runs.
Assume it’s true for a moment. Who would be the perpetrator here? And who would bring charges?
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/11 "2020-05-14T06:15:50Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#):
>
> Assume it’s true for a moment. Who would be the perpetrator here? And who would bring charges?
It’s theoretically possible to sue the government for these trespasses, or to sunlight information through freedom of information requests, but really, Congress as a whole is too weak-willed to stop it, and the agencies are free to redact or seal cases as they see fit in the name of “national security”. It’s a legal black hole/get-out-of-jail-free-card and forever will be as long as we keep electing shitty congresspeople and presidents.
As a private citizen you’d have to be able to show damages/standing, be rich enough to find a lawyer to fight for you, have enough inside info to know which particular agency to sue and what information they have on you, and probably be willing to resettle in Russia even if you win. And the public might never hear about it anyway, because a fair trial would require releasing all the new ways they’ve been capturing information – metadata or otherwise – and thus be a national security threat. That’s why Wikileaks, an out-of-band information repository, was the closest thing to truth we’d gotten, and why Obama smacked down so hard on whistleblowers afterward.
Even the ACLU finds this a hard fight in “normal” decades, much less now. They’ve been [complaining that it’s unconstitutional since 2008](https://www.aclu.org/why-fisa-amendments-act-unconstitutional?redirect=national-security/why-fisa-amendments-act-unconstitutional); does anyone listen? The [Supreme Court doesn’t give a damn](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/supreme-court-dismisses-challenge-fisa-warrantless-wiretapping-law-effs-lawsuit). The EFF, the other major org aside from the ACLU concerned about such matters, [continues to fight in other lawsuits](https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel).
This arguably isn’t a legal question, because it’s unconstitutional, and yet still very politically popular in that there has never been a critical mass of legislators or judges willing to fight to make it actually punishable. And the electorate has largely turned a blind eye to it as well, and keep reelecting people who in turn don’t prioritize it.
And these efforts are hardly new… a random smattering from Wikipedia:
> **[COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)**
>
> COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organi The FBI has used covert ...
> **[Carnivore (software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software))**
>
> Carnivore, later renamed DCS1000, was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that could monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic. Carnivore was implemented in October 1997. By 2005 it had been replaced with improved commercial software.
> Carnivore grew out of an earlier FBI project called "Omnivore", which itself replaced an older undisclosed (at the time) surv...
> **[ECHELON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON)**
>
> ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated by the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, also known as the Five Eyes.
> Created in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, the ECHELON project became formally ...
> **[Digital Collection System Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Collection_System_Network)**
>
> The Digital Collection System Network (DCSNet) is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s point-and-click surveillance system that can perform instant wiretaps on almost any telecommunications device in the United States.
> It allows access to cellphone, landline, SMS communications anywhere in the US from a point-and-click interface. It runs on a fiber-optic backbone that is separate from the Internet. It is intended to increase agent productivity through workflow modeling, allowing for the r...
> **[Magic Lantern (software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software))**
>
> Magic Lantern is keystroke logging software created by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Magic Lantern was first reported in a column by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC on November 20, 2001 and by Ted Bridis of the Associated Press.
> Magic Lantern can reportedly be installed remotely, via an e-mail attachment or by exploiting common operating system vulnerabilities, unlike previous keystroke logger programs used by the FBI. It has been described as a virus and a Trojan horse. I...
> **[Tailored Access Operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations)**
>
> The Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), now Computer Network Operations, and structured as S32, is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the National Security Agency (NSA). It has been active since at least 1998, possibly 1997, but was not named or structured as TAO until "the last days of 2000," according to General Michael Hayden.
> TAO identifies, monitors, infiltrates, and gathers intelligence on computer systems being used by entities foreign to the United States.
> TAO is rep...
The law has never stopped this. Congressmen have always expressed “concern” at their overreach, and nothing has ever been done.
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### Author:  [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/12 "2020-05-14T11:26:53Z")
It’s not just emails, they can now get your browser history without a warrant -
[Now there’s nothing stopping the PATRIOT Act allowing the FBI to slurp web-browsing histories without a warrant](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/us_spying_laws/)
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### Author:  [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/13 "2020-05-14T13:34:46Z")
> [@jnglmassiv](#):
>
> Assume it’s true for a moment. Who would be the perpetrator here? And who would bring charges?
This is a problem with the law. If I remember correctly, and there’s a chance I get this backwards, abuse of FISA authorities for intentional illegal surveillance in theory carries criminal penalties, but abuse of Executive Order 12333 (which is the foundational document that authorizes the collection of foreign (not domestic!) intelligence outside of the United States does not.
So let’s say an intelligence analyst goes rogue and starts snooping on Americans. He could face very different repercussions based on how the spying occurred. But the logs of what he was doing are reviewed by inspectors general who make periodic reports to Congress (I think it’s quarterly) on any abuses they find, and the Civil Liberties and Protection Office also reviews them. There have been cases where the collection authorities themselves were shut down because of abuses, but I’m not aware of anyone being prosecuted.
For example: [Surprise: NSA Stops Collecting Americans' Emails 'About' Foreign Targets | Techdirt](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170428/10405737260/surprise-nsa-stops-collecting-americans-emails-about-foreign-targets.shtml)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2020, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nsa-emails/853679/14 "2020-05-14T20:27:08Z")
**[Moderating]**
> [@](#):
>
> Quoth **Reply** :
>
> I can’t tell if you’re joking here… but this is the US Government we’re talking about. Intelligence, no less. You think the Constitution would stop them? Our laws didn’t matter much when Bush fabricated enemies out of thin air for us to attack, our laws didn’t much matter much when Obama butchered the First Amendment to shut down whistleblowers, or when he ordered a drone assassination of a US citizen. Our laws certainly don’t matter to the current cretin in chief. And which senator would stand up to them? (There have actually been a few who have objected to the fucked-up ness of these programs, but by and large warrantless wiretapping of Americans receives broad bipartisan support by the powers that be, under various acts vaguely related to terrorism, national security, etc. and renewed under different agencies and pet names every few years. Arguably, most everyday Americans don’t really care either.)
The fact that this rant is bipartisan in no way invalidates the fact that it’s completely inappropriate for General Questions. This is a Warning for politicking in GQ.