14 DAY TRIAL // New reports indicate that the reach the NSA has on Internet traffic is far greater than the mere 1.6 percent they wanted people to believe a few weeks ago, but rather reaches the 75 percent mark.
The newly revealed programs run by the NSA give the agency access not only to email metadata, but also to their content, says the Wall Street Journal.
This wouldn’t be possible, however, without a little outside help, whether it was given willingly or not.
According to the newspaper, the NSA asks telecom companies to send it various streams of Internet traffic they believe to contain foreign intelligence.
And while these requests don’t cover the entire Internet traffic, they focus on certain areas of interest. One person who wanted to remain anonymous told the WSJ that this is still a large amount of data, “but not everything in the world.”
Then, the NSA copies the traffic and decides which communications to keep based on some “strong selectors.” Among these, they can count an email address or a computer address that corresponds to an individual or organization the agency is interested in.
This surveillance system relies heavily on the relationship the agency has with telecommunications carriers across the US, covering about 75 percent of communications. However, since the NSA can ask for orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, ISPs must generally nod their heads and say “yes, sir” when prompted.
However, the Internet providers are the ones responsible with the first cut of the data they provide to the NSA. “The providers are independently deciding what would be responsive,” an official source tells the WSJ.
Talks about what constitutes as foreign communications have reportedly been going on for some years between the government officials and various telecom companies, but common ground has not yet been reached.