N.S.A. Halts Collection of Americans' Emails About Foreign Targets

The rest are fair game.

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency said Friday that it
had halted one of the most disputed practices of its warrantless
surveillance program, ending a once-secret form of wiretapping
that dates to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 expansion
of national security powers.

The agency is no longer collecting Americans’ emails and texts
exchanged with people overseas that simply mention identifying
terms — like email addresses — for foreigners whom the agency is
spying on, but are neither to nor from those targets.

The decision is a major development in American surveillance
policy. Privacy advocates have argued that the practice skirted
or overstepped the Fourth Amendment.

The change is unrelated to the surveillance imbroglio over the
investigations into Russia and the Trump campaign, according to
officials familiar with the matter. Rather, it stemmed from a
discovery last year that N.S.A. analysts had violated rules
imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to limit
access to certain messages the agency captured as a byproduct of
the practice.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the
Intelligence Committee and has long been an outspoken critic of
what he saw as N.S.A. overreach, hailed the decision and said he
would offer legislation to codify the new limit in federal law.

“This change ends a practice that allowed Americans’
communications to be collected without a warrant merely for
mentioning a foreign target,” Mr. Wyden said. “For years, I’ve
repeatedly raised concerns that this amounted to an end run
around the Fourth Amendment. This transparency should be
commended.”

The government had argued that the practice was important for
fighting terrorism, saying it could uncover new suspects it
might otherwise never find.

The legal issue behind the N.S.A.’s decision, first reported
Friday by The New York Times and later acknowledged by the
agency, is rooted in the complicated technical steps the agency
takes to conduct surveillance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/u...-surveillance-
terrorism-privacy.html?_r=0