This isn't a line. Everything I've seen in the leaks indicates an intent by the NSA to try and stay within the contours of the law. They are allowed to collect whatever foreign data they want, and they are, at least based on reasonable interpretations of existing precedents, allowed to collect metadata about phone calls.

You can certainly draw assumptions from that: they aren't going to back away from these very reasonable interpretations unless the Supreme Court makes them untenable by, say, rejecting the Third Party Doctrine, but given the law that's on the books, it's accurate to say that what has been leaked is not consistent with the NSA actively seeking to ignore the law.

Everything I've seen has been a consistent effort by the NSA to eviscerate the intent of fundamental laws through clever loopholes of various implementations and rulings, often from completely different contexts.

They covered their asses to keep from going down for actual criminal activity, but I'm not willing to say that they seem to have placed any emphasis on the fundamental liberties or protections that the Constitution is supposed to afford.

Even their secret court has pointed out that they're crossing the line (likely, more than once).

I mean, it's at the point that they're having to lie to a secret, relatively unaccountable court because even that won't buy their bullshit.

Smith v. Maryland squarely says that your privacy interest in your phone calls ends to the extent that your phone call metadata is exposed to third parties. That's not a "loophole" it's a delineation of the boundary of the right. And leveraging Smith v. Maryland isn't taking advantage of a loophole in a "completely different context" but rather applying the reasoning of the case in the same context in which the case arose: is it a search to collect the meta-data of a phone call from the phone company? You may think Smith v. Maryland needs to be overturned, but for now, the NSA is entitled to rely on it.

As for the "intent of fundamental laws" the intent of the 4th amendment was to prevent customs officials from trespassing on private property. The founders never talked about the "right of privacy" as a coherent concept. The "right to privacy" was conjured from the "penumbras" of the Constitution (i.e. thin air) just a couple of decades before Smith v. Maryland was decided.

What exactly is the point you're trying to make here? That this is all legal? They have at least violated the SPIRIT of the law.

Also, you are ignoring all other reports that the NSA is storing CONTENT of every means of communication.

Just this week, it was revealed that they store hundreds of millions of text messages:

* http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-mi...

They also store every single phone call made in the US:

* http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1...

* http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-fla...

Oh, and thinking about using Skype? Also tapped:

* http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-taps-skype-ch...

> What exactly is the point you're trying to make here? That this is all legal? They have at least violated the SPIRIT of the law.

The "spirit" of the law is to keep government agents from trespassing on your property looking for contraband. The "right of privacy" wasn't conjured out of thin air by the Supreme Court until the 1960's. Collecting information under the Third Party Doctrine violates neither the letter nor the spirit of the 4th amendment.

> Just this week, it was revealed that they store hundreds of millions of text messages:

Are they the text messages of Americans?

> They also store every single phone call made in the US:

If they store every phone call made in the U.S. that would definitely be illegal. But the evidence that they do this is much flimsier than for the other things we know they do.

I think his point is that ultimately what matters is whether these abilities are being abused, particularly for something like political ends - so far we've seen only a few isolated cases towards personal ends(and the nsa did not protect those people). Given the size of the organization I think it's safe to say that that is within the bounds of statistical probability.

What about the interpretation that something that is illegal for them to do isn't illegal when a machine does it, but only becomes illegal when a human gets involved?

E.g. they can collect every detail about a person's life in ways that are normally illegal, but it's ok because no person has looked at the data yet.

I think that interpretation is very weak, but as far as I can tell, it's not the basis for any of their programs, just an explanation offered to support their minimization procedures, which are probably inadequate. Legally, that seems to be the issue: they have procedures in place to try and only collect foreign data, but American data gets caught up in the net too and their procedures for filtering out American data aren't good enough. That's bad, but I don't think it evinces an intent to actively ignore the law.

What's the legality of spying on our allies? Aren't treaties supposed to be law once ratified?

What's the legality of basically giving full system access to all NSA data to 'allies' such as Israel with only a footnote in the agreement about using the 'honour system' if they find data in the system that shouldn't be there (e.g. a Senator's data gets caught in the net)?

What about the legality of skirting 'no spying on Americans' laws by forming agreements with foreign bodies such that said foreign body readily shares all data it has from spying on Americans (and the NSA does the same thing in kind, sharing data that said foreign body isn't legally allowed to collect on its own).

Well, apparently you didn't look hard enough, then.

"The government further disclosed that, apart from this shared database, NSA analysts made it a general practice to disseminate to other agencies NSA intelligence reports containing U.S. person information [..] without obtaining the required determination." (Page 18)

"The government has provided no comprehensive explanation of how so substantial an overcollection occurred, only the conclusion that, [..] there was a failure to translate the technical requirements [..]" (Page 21)

"The history of material misstatements in prior applications and non-compliance with prior orders gives the Court pause before approving such an expanded collection." (Page 72)

(SPOILER ALERT: Of course they rubber stamped it anyway!)

All from http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/1118/CLEANEDPRTT%202.pdf

My problem with these agencies being 'allowed to collect whatever foreign data they want', means that it means that governments can get any data they want on any person.

I don't live in the US, I'm currently in Australia. Australia has no law stopping them from gathering data on Americans, so what happens when the US says, 'hey, tell us about our citizens, we'll tell you about yours'.

You essentially have created the same mass surveillance, you've just outsourced it.