OK, let's look at the slide that WaPo just posted (classified picture warning) [View all]

[Recursion]

(I doubt anybody is here on a government computer, but if they are, spoiler space so you don't have to go report yourself.)









This is interesting. There are two paths here, one for live surveillance and one for stored communications. The FBI is involved with both.

For live surveillance, the S2 FAA adjudicators have to agree with the analyst that the target is not American; for stored communication, FISC has to. In either case, the request is then reviewed by Mission Management. After that, for stored communications the FBI has yet another level of checks where it ensures that the stored communications are not from US citizens.

The request is then forwarded to the FBI, who either engages in the realtime surveillance or requests the stored data from the providers, and then forwards it to the NSA once received.

There is no situation where a single analyst can just look at whatever the hell he wants. Snowden was lying about that. What's more, the NSA isn't doing any of the gathering itself.