Revealed: The top secret rules that allow NSA to 'spy on U.S. citizens, keep accidentally collected data for five years and use it without a warrant'

The secret U.S. court operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ACT (FISA) has given the National Security Agency a green light to use data collected 'inadvertently' from Americans while spying on foreign targets, it was revealed today.

Among the leaked classified documents published by the UK newspaper The Guardian Thursday were two court submissions signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and dated July 29, 2009, which detail the procedures the NSA must follow to target 'non-U.S. persons.'

Holder’s court submissions also outlined steps the agency is required to follow in an effort to minimize the data accidentally collected on U.S. citizens.



Storage space: NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, where government records of citizen's phone and internet usage could be kept

According to the leaked reports, data gathered on Americans without a warrant under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed. The documents also outline how analysts must take 'extensive steps' to try to check targets are outside the U.S.

The Fisa court documents state that U.S. call records can be used to help remove Americans from data collection.

But despite the steps that NSA analysts are required to take in order to avoid spying on Americans, the Fisa court allows the agency to keep potentially domestic data for up to five years, and use 'inadvertently acquired domestic communications that contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity.’

Man in charge: Secret Fisa court documents signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and dated July 29, 2009, detail the procedures the NSA must follow to target 'non-U.S. persons'

In other words, if analysts snooping on a foreign target happen to net data belonging to an American citizen, they are permitted by law to retain it and make use of it so long as it contains valuable and actionable information.

The NSA policies approved by the Fisa court also allow the agency to access the content of communications gathered from 'U.S. based machine[s]' or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The newly revealed court orders appear to call into question President Obamas' past assurances that the NSA could not access Americans' phone calls and emails without a warrant.

In light of the recent leaks, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, from California, and Republican Congressman Todd Rokita, of Indiana, introduced a bi-partisan ill Thursday to increase the transparency of the Fisa court by having the Obama administration disclose legal justifications for NSA surveillance.

‘It would give the public a better understanding of the safeguards, as well as the scope of these programs,’ the proposed legislation states.

NSA's procedures made public by The Guardian state that if NSA analysts determine that their target is a foreign national, that person is by default believed to be outside the U.S.

In cases where agency operatives have no specific details about the person they are spying on, he or she is automatically presumed to be oversees.

If later in the surveillance process analysts determine that their target is American, they are allowed to rifle through the person's data and listen to phone calls to verify that he or she is indeed in the U.S.

Once it is ascertained that the target is American, surveillance must stop at once, unless the information is being collected as part of a large- scale data-mining operation where the NSA is unable to separate U.S. communications for foreign ones.

Unless analysts find actionable data about criminal activities, or other pertinent intel, the information collected from a domestic source must be destroyed. However, it appears that much of the day-today decision-making is left up to the discretion of individual analysts rather than the Fisa court.





