NYT: N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens

[Adam Back]

This bit is interesting so the NSA digitally tails all americans without
suspicion and if it turns up "evidence of a crime" (not related to
terrorism, just crime in general mind) it can disclose that law enforcement.

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 05:51:44PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>Analysts were warned to follow existing "minimization rules," which
>prohibit the N.S.A. from sharing with other agencies names and other
>details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they
>are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is
>evidence of a crime. 

So what are we talking about here - jay-walking?  Buying CFDs?  (Widely sold
financial instruments in other countries).  Online gambling?  (Apparently
some types of online gambling are not legal in the US).  And so forth.

Also I'm not sure how you find evidence of a crime from a social graph
analysis without a content wire tap, but maybe a location and time would do
as suspicion or some level of evidence it if there is some crime that was
known to have occurred at a certain place and time range and they have the
phone calling and GPS records.

Anyway it yet again violates the US governments claims: that their citizens
dont have anything to worry about, its just targetted at terrorists.  Not so
- they digitally tail everyone and if they find anything suspicious period
they forward it to law enforcement.

Are they also forwarding such tips to other spy-partner countries?

Adam