Resolution resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance. Violations

Metadata analysis is not electronic surveillance

Cassidy 13 John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. June 27, 2013

The New Yorker N.S.A. Latest: The Secret History of Domestic Surveillance

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/n-s-a-latest-the-secret-history-of-domestic-surveillance

Still, the N.S.A. chafed at the remaining legal restrictions on accessing data from American citizens communicating online with other American citizens. In a November, 2007, memorandum, which the Guardian has also posted online, a lawyer at the Justice Department, Kenneth Wainstein, told Michael Mukasey, the New York judge who had recently taken over as Attorney General, that the N.S.A. wanted a new set of procedures that would give the Agency considerably broader authorization. The memo said:

The Supplemental Procedures, attached at Tab A, would clarify that the National Security Agency (NSA) may analyze communications metadata associated with United States persons and persons believed to be in the United States…We conclude that the proposed Supplemental Procedures are consistent with the applicable law and we recommend that you approve them.

The memo argued that the new set of procedures, because they covered online metadata rather than actual content, didn’t violate the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy, and neither did they need the approval of the FISA courts: “To fall within FISA’s definition of ‘electronic surveillance,’ an action must satisfy one of the four definitions of that term. None of these definitions cover the communications metadata analysis at issue here.”