Although that said, they read ALL emails, and have said [0] that they require no authorization or warrant to listen to your calls, read your text messages, and read your email. So no, without explicit reigning in, those things the GP lists are not all as they once were.
[0] http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents...
From 1946: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement "For example, the British newspaper The Independent reported back in 1996 that the U.S. National Security Agency "taps UK phones" at the request of the British intelligence agency MI5, thus allowing British agents to evade restrictive limitations on domestic telephone tapping.[53]"
Note the actual judgement is linked on the bottom.
I believe you that the NSA might provide intelligence to its partners about foreign nationals that those partners could not lawfully collect themselves.
I'm wondering if NSA can actually procure intelligence about US citizens from its partners.
Beyond that point, I have no idea if there is some exemption that lets them request specific information.
Instead it appears that NSA had gathered data relating to UK citizens (under NSA's existing legal authorities) and that the GCHQ then asked for that data to be shared with it.
UK law is incredibly surveillance-friendly compared to the USA so I'd be surprised if there were even a reason for GCHQ to ask NSA to do surveillance on GCHQ's behalf; GCHQ could much more easily do it directly.
But NSA-sourced data could still be useful for GCHQ, which would make sense that GCHQ asks for it when it's been collected, for the same reason Germany's BND was found to be sharing data with NSA (in BND's case, because they wanted NSA to share their own data with BND).
Which uses 53 as its source. "US spy base `taps UK phones for MI5'" which may or may not be credible. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/us-spy-base-t....
However, my second posts links to a court case which suggests they overstepped some bounds.
No data should be collected without a warrant, this look so much like how communist countries during cold war were spying on its own citizens. What makes it even worse is that thanks to advanced technology far more information can be collected about us.
In your world, are police officers allowed to call in license plate numbers to see if the car of the person they just pulled over is registered to an escaped armed criminal? May the government tune radios to public airwaves? Or is it just electronic communications which are special?
License plates? That's why they are for, you register your car with DMV or similar institution in your country for the sole purpose of matching you with the car.
So keeping database of all license plates that match drivers, perfectly ok, but scanning automatically license plates and building map of your daily routes, that is going too far. Where I frequent is my private business.
Public airwaves? Yes, the keyword is "public", assuming the communication is not encrypted. If it is encrypted then it means it should be private.
Criminals can use encryption? Doesn't matter, it is still private. If we allow to go that route, next thing you know we will have implants in our heads transmitting what we are thinking.
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Fine, just don't complain when it turns out that your expectation of what is normal doesn't match up with the population.
Oh, so the solution is easy then; just make tapping phones legal for everybody again! It might also make those guys with their police scanners happy.
While we're at it, they can bring back party lines for landline telephone use and save some money, or let weev out of prison, and in the meantime the NSA and FBI can gobble up all of our communications.
As far as the landscape of intelligence. That's a very good question. The NSA is an incredibly large organization with a wide variety of projects. I think for the most part the organization's mission is pretty noble. I just also happen to think that they went off the rails at some point and started doing misguided, counterproductive things that should be illegal.
I don't have an entire plan drawn out for the restructuring of the NSA, but I do think that Bruce Schneier made some very sensible suggestions for true reform.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/02/breaking_up_t...
That being said, I think that the FBI needs some work as well.
I'd be okay with mass collection of metadata, as long as searches through that data had to be limited, audited, and focused on a specific topic for a specific active investigation. And if there were a trustworthy access control and auditing process to make sure there were no more LOVINT leaks, and none of that bullshit that the FBI pulled on MLK jr.
However, I don't think I would trust any agency to not find a way around that, in time. The power is too great, it's too tempting, and administrations change. Therefore, in our real world, I don't support mass un-targeted perpetual data collection, at all.
By the way the same question applies to the intelligence agencies. What level of freedom is acceptable in their opinion. I've heard a number of easily disprovable talking points in favor of continued expansion of this full-employment-act for intelligence "analysts," but what would people's ability to freely express themselves look like if the intelligence community had its way?
> thanks to advanced technology far more information can be collected
Advanced technology also provides the tools to defend against mass surveillance.