Report: NSA shares unredacted information about US citizens... with Israel
The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.I wonder how Obama can find a way to blame Bush for that one.
According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.
Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.
"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law," the document says.
In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.
"Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA's surveillance activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights," the spokesperson said.
The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.And how did the NSA get this information?
The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans' emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.
Moreover, with much of the world's internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency's surveillance programs.
The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will "regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons' identities". It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a "strict need to know".I don't know what data is being provided, but my guess is that what interests the Israeli government is information regarding US citizens who come here to assist 'Palestinian' terrorism - like International Solidarity Movement members. I'm fine with that.
But the Israeli government may also be interested in the activities of US citizens who live in Israel while they are in the United States. While I understand that might be necessary for people with security clearances, let's just say that it doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: intelligence, Israeli national security, National Security
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:13 PM
2 Comments:
I have a guess as to what's going on here...There was a scandal during the 1980s, I think, involving similar information-sharing between intelligence agencies in the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand (not Israel, as I recall). Basically, the agencies were using the information-sharing as a way to circumvent their prohibitions against domestic surveillance: the NSA, for instance, wasn't allowed to monitor Americans, but its Canadian counterpart was under no such constraints, and if it found something "interesting", it could simply alert its American friends without (explicitly) revealing how it obtained the information. The NSA would of course reciprocate in kind, based on data harvested domestically in Canada.
Could be that we're witnessing a repeat...
You have to second source everything from The Guardian. Half of it is Iranian propaganda and the other half is lies.
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