Lawrence O'Donnell: Edward Snowden's Christmas Message Was 'Wildly Overblown,' 'Provably Untrue'

[JDPriestly]

116. Did you read this?

. . . .

Under PRISM, the NSA gathers huge volumes of online communications records by legally compelling U.S. technology companies, including Yahoo and Google, to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. That program, which was first disclosed by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper in Britain, is authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act and overseen by the Foreign ­Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

Intercepting communications overseas has clear advantages for the NSA, with looser restrictions and less oversight. NSA documents about the effort refer directly to “full take,” “bulk access” and “high volume” operations on Yahoo and Google networks. Such large-scale collection of Internet content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take place overseas, where the NSA is allowed to presume that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner.

. . . .

John Schindler, a former NSA chief analyst and frequent defender who teaches at the Naval War College, said it is obvious why the agency would prefer to avoid restrictions where it can.

“Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers, and their entire job is figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection by exploiting every loophole,” he said. “It’s fair to say the rules are less restrictive under Executive Order 12333 than they are under FISA,” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

I suspect that many of the Snowden critics have not read the articles published in various news sources about the various NSA programs. They aren't just collecting metadata. And all they have to do is get e-mail routed say, to Ireland, and then they can catch it and that is an "inadvertent" seizure of the e-mails of an American. I was shocked to discover that my e-mail account was identified as being in Ireland at one point. I don't think it normally has anything to do with Ireland. The Washington Post article is very interesting and worth reading in its entirety.