re: #11 Killgore Trout

The latest Snowden leak is going to cause some problems.
Document shows surveillance of US law firm

At least this is going to cause some legal problems unless there was some legit reason for it. I suspect we’re going to see some more NSA reforms in the near future.

Did you read the article? It doesn’t say the NSA conducted the surveillance.

The NSA’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, had notified the NSA that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information, the Times reported.

Liaison officials asked the NSA general counsel’s office, on behalf of the Australians, for guidance about the spying. The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office ”provided clear guidance” and that the Australian eavesdropping agency ”has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested U.S. customers,” according to the Times story.

It’s not at all clear that the NSA even accepted the Australian offer, only that the NSA general counsel’s office reviewed the offer and gave an answer. All we know is that the situation gave enough pause that the NSA felt the need to have their lawyers examine it closely. Furthermore:

The Times reported that the NSA can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad, such as Indonesian officials. The U.S. agency is then required to follow so-called minimization rules to protect their privacy, such as deleting the identity of Americans or information that is not deemed necessary to understand or assess the foreign intelligence, before sharing it with other agencies, the paper reported.

Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. But if it did the clients would have been foreign government officials calling from outside our borders. Considering that I’m not sure either party to that phone call has a reasonable expectation of privacy.