Officials: NSA's PRISM Targets Email Addresses, Not Keywords 96
wiredmikey writes "The US government's PRISM Internet spying program exposed by Edward Snowden targets suspect email addresses and phone numbers but does not search for keywords like terrorism, officials said Wednesday. Top lawyers of the country's intelligence apparatus including the NSA and FBI participated Wednesday in a public hearing on the controversial US data-mining operations that intercept emails and other Internet communications including on social media networks like Facebook, Google or Skype. 'We figure out what we want and we get that specifically, that's why it's targeted collection rather than bulk collection,' Robert Litt, general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the hearing. Under authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA asks Internet service providers to hand over messages sent from or received by certain accounts such as terrorist@google.com, the Justice Department's Brad Wiegmann said, using a hypothetical example."
Re:Why should I believe anything officials say (Score:4, Funny)
to the public, when the Snowden documents show they've been lying for years.
Not to argue your fundamental point, but AFAICT they haven't been lying for years they've been saying nothing for years. They have lied recently, though, and internally they've been using carefully-crafted definitions to interpret the law in ways that allowed them to convince themselves they were obeying it. So, in essence they've been fooling themselves for year, but not actually lying to the public because they haven't been saying anything to the public.