Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers

[DirkGently]

8. Depends on whose equipment has been intercepted.

An attack on one legitimate target of foreign surveillance is not the issue.

Every router bound for export isn't going to be used exclusively by America's enemies. American companies themselves are often international at this point. Are they subject to NSA surveillance without suspicion of wrongdoing?

And the NSA doesn't have a mandate to simply spy on every foreigner, everywhere.

Foreign business interests, for example would be an overreach just as warrantless domestic surveillance is, without some relevance to national security.

But as Greenwald pointed out on Colbert last night, NSA's own internal memos indicate its goal had become to collect everything, everywhere. That is not the mandate we gave it, and that is the point of all this.