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Comment by mbateman | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is it supposed to mean that the NSA intercepts only data with one "foreign end"? That it intercepts all data that crosses e.g. a transatlantic cable? Or that it scans the IP header of absolutely everything and grabs anything with a non-US IP as either source or destination? Or something else?

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That's where the "minimization" documents from last week come in. They actually collect everything, but then there is some kind of filter at the collection point that is supposed to remove any communication that they are certain is american-to-american. But that filter also has exceptions for things like encrypted messages or pretty much anything else they are interested in. They make the filter as loose as they can while still being able to maintain some deniability that they don't collect domestic communication.

That really depends on the details of what's capable with their collection equipment.

Transoceanic cables are obvious, but there are also satellite-satellite links that are possible that could terminate right in Iowa for all we know, that the NSA wouldn't be able to retain unless/until it made it to one of the Tier 1 ISPs (they might use geolocated IPs for this).

And as the other comment mentions, the minimization procedures seem arranged to blacklist and discard only that data which is clearly US<->US so you could definitely end up with your data being socked away.

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