Troubling aspects of the NSA's programs

The U.S. government has been issuing public statements that conflict with the classified documents that have been leaked about the NSA surveillance programs.  The Obama administration has stated that the NSA’s surveillance programs gather only metadata about the communications of American citizens, and that a specific warrant is required in order to dig further.  However, as Glenn Greenwald and James Ball report for The Guardian, the data collected is broader and mostly under a general court order.  On June 20, The Guardian published two classified documents approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) which are supposed to limit the NSA’s power to spy on Americans.  However, the documents leave open a window that “US communications can still be collected, retained and used” (Greenwald and Ball 3).  The authors detail that “inadvertently acquired domestic communications” can be retained if there is usable intelligence in them (Greenwald and Ball 9).  Even communications between attorneys and their clients, which cannot be used in criminal proceedings, can be used by the NSA to further an intelligence investigation.  This shows that NSA analysts are able to observe the content of communications.  Supposedly they are only supposed to investigate communications that have a foreigner directly involved.  However, the analysts are given a lot of leeway to determine if the target is a foreigner.  For instance, “[w]here the NSA has no specific information on a person's location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas” (Greenwald and Ball 21).  The analysts do not have to go to a court or even their own supervisors to determine if they can continue investigating a target.  Rather they rely on their own discretion

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At this point, I am not shocked that that the NSA operates this way.  However, the leaked documents show just tidbits of valuable information that we have not been able to get from official outlets.  It is becoming harder to trust the official information that comes out about these programs.  Nevertheless, it is time for government officials with authority over the classification of this information to be more transparent. If they can give us the reasoning for their decisions, then we might give our approval of them.

Works cited:

Greenwald, Glenn, James Ball "The Top Secret Rules that Allow NSA to Use US Data Without a Warrant." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 20 June 2013. Web. 23 June 2013.