Reports Says NSA Can Spy On U.S Citizens Without Warrant Via A Loophole

According to another new Guardian report the NSA has been conducting warrant-less spying on its own U.S citizens despite claiming frequently in the media that it has not been doing so unless a legal warrant has been present. The NSA have more or less admitted to warrant-less spying on non-U.S citizens through their XKeyscore program but they had always stated that U.S citizens were protected from such a thing by the need for a legal warrant.

Apparently the NSA uses a loophole in its own rules to carry out searches for U.S citizens email and phone call details without the need for a warrant. The document which proves this is section 702 of a secret glossary provided to NSA’s Special Source Operation division.

Senator Ron Wyden commented on such a loophole stating that:

“Section 702 was intended to give the government new authorities to collect the communications of individuals believed to be foreigners outside the US, but the intelligence community has been unable to tell Congress how many Americans have had their communications swept up in that collection.”

The NSA has yet to answer to such claims but the dubious nature of section 702 remains and Senator Wyden, along with his intelligence committee colleague Mark Udall, wrote in a letter to the NSA that

“[W]e note that this same fact sheet states that under Section 702, ‘Any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorised purpose nor evidence of a crime.”

Image courtesy of Heavy.com