The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".
The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.
The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.
A 12-year-old boy was among five people who died in the fiery crash of a small...
Quincy Jones, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic “Thriller”...
Boeing machinists voted to approve a contract offer on Monday, closing the book on a bruising...
Abdi Nageeye, 35, from the Netherlands, claimed victory in the men’s race of the New York...
