14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the NSA's many denials, the agency does not only spy on Americans but shares that data freely and without any restriction with Israel, according to a new document uncovered by the Guardian from the Edward Snowden treasure trove.
The document, a memorandum, reveals a secret agreement between the two countries, and that the US government has shared raw data captured by its surveillance programs or obtained though court orders and other means with the Israelis without any filtering or any attempt to remove data on Americans.
What's more, the deal places no limits on what the Israelis can do with the data.
While the memorandum stresses that the Israelis should not target any American and try to respect the privacy of Americans, there are no actual enforceable rules forbidding that. The data sharing is also mostly one-sided.
The NSA keeps on reassuring us that its actions are legal and, even if they aren't, they're for the good of Americans.
It also assures everyone that, even though it has the full phone records of any American and even though it inadvertently (or not) captures internal email and Internet traffic to and from US citizens, it isn't really targeting Americans.
That's because, it says, all the raw data it captures goes through a filtering system that is designed to remove communications that take place entirely inside the US.
However, the NSA shares the raw, original data with the Israelis, not this filtered one. Assuming that the filters do their job, Israel gets more data on Americans from the NSA than the NSA does.
There is one strict rule in the deal: Israelis must destroy on sight any communications to and from US government officials.
That begs the question of why would the NSA be in possession of communications between US government officials in the first place. Though given its dragnet approach to surveillance, it shouldn't be too surprising. That’s assuming that the NSA doesn't target government officials in the first place and that's one big assumption to make.