NSA Can Reach 75 Percent of All US Internet Traffic
The latest surveillance "No, it's bigger than you think" news comes from the Wall Street Journal, which is reporting that though the president may say the National Security Agency is not reading your e-mail, it's not because they lack the capacity to do so:
The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.
The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.
The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.
The full story is paywalled, but a Google News search of "NSA" should get it for you in the first couple of matches and let you read the full piece, which includes a graphic and Q&A showing how it works.
