Legalities: NSA outsourcing spying on Americans?

Steven M. Bellovin smb at cs.columbia.edu
Tue Mar 10 23:08:17 EDT 2009


The assertion occasionally comes up that since the NSA cannot legally
eavesdrop on Americans, it outsources to the UK or one of the other
Echelon countries.  It turns out that that's forbidden, too -- see
Section 2.12 of Executive Order 12333
(http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html)

Now, I'm not saying that the government or the NSA always follows the
rules; I'm simply saying that that loophole is pretty obvious and is
(officially, at least) closed.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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