By Jaime Ortega.
Edward Snowden has been the trigger for one of the biggest scandals that have plagued the Obama Administration. This sub-contracted employee of the CIA decided to reveal the methods used by U.S. authorities to spy on citizens and businesses and gradually, their leakage to the newspapers ‘The Washington Post’ and ‘The Guardian’ that shed new details about his leakage.
The British newspaper revealed on Thursday two classified documents that provide the legal basis for the broad Internet espionage operations by the National Security Agency (NSA). Both orders, signed by the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, respectively detailing how the NSA can spy a “U.S. person” under the Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) and the safeguards to prevent U.S. store data , which may not be compatible with the Constitution.
The orders show that the NSA can intercept communications from citizens or permanent residents to communicate with a foreigner, but they must omit the name of the U.S. citizen affected by espionage or simply delete information.
According to the order on the monitoring of non-US citizens, signed by Holder in 2009 and classified as “top secret”, the NSA must ensure that the “physical location” of espionage target is outside the United States as a first step.
The second document, classified as “secret”, explains the process to “minimize” the “acquisition, retention, use, and dissemination” of information of American citizens in the process.
These two documents were forwarded to opaque FISA court, authorizing the NSA access to phone records and information from the internet.
President Barack Obama has said that these two programs spy secrets but do not listen to phone calls or read emails from Americans.
However, these two orders that qualify NSA and FBI Americans could store information if it is categorized as an “inadvertent” and whenever relevant for intelligence to be useful for preventing immediate or people, it can be recorded.
It also provides access to server content communications or telephone numbers in the United States if they are useful to determine whether a party is physically on U.S. soil or not.
