The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.
At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
"No sir," replied Clapper.
Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported - including to Congress - that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."
Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-global-datamining
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It is a straight up lie that it is not technologically feasible to breakdown data. If that wasn't the case down to ip address/user account number based on that address, the internet would not work.
Evidently, most of those address to address paths have an NSA connection. They certainly have corporate billing logs.
Another interesting development:
Last week, The Guardian released an order issued by the FISC that compelled a Verizon subsidiary-Verizon Business Network Services (VBNS)-to hand over, on an "ongoing, daily basis," details for every phone call placed on its network for a prospective three-month period. Collecting those details-"metadata" that reveals who people talk to, for how long, how often, and possibly from where-allows the government to paint an alarmingly detailed picture of Americans' private lives. The FISC order cited Section 215 as its legal basis, yet the breadth of the authority it granted to the government is simply incompatible with the text of the statute.
As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend the civil liberties of society's most vulnerable, the staff at the ACLU naturally use the phone-a lot-to talk about sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators, whistleblowers, and ACLU members. And since the ACLU is a VBNS customer, we were immediately confronted with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have on our legal and advocacy work. So we're acting quickly to get into court to challenge the government's abuse of Section 215.
The ACLU's complaint filed today explains that the dragnet surveillance the government is carrying out under Section 215 infringes upon the ACLU's First Amendment rights, including the twin liberties of free expression and free association. The nature of the ACLU's work-in areas like access to reproductive services, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants, national security, and more-means that many of the people who call the ACLU wish to keep their contact with the organization confidential. Yet if the government is collecting a vast trove of ACLU phone records-and it has reportedly been doing so for as long as seven years-many people may reasonably think twice before communicating with us.
CG