C.I.A. Report Finds Concerns With Ties to New York Police

[Jesus Malverde]

26. It's not the "current calls" they listen in on...

They have all the past calls, transcribed, indexed and stored.

When "someone from AQAP calls someone in Kansas" an analyst pulls that data and reviews it, and then all other calls to the Kansas number. Then they look at all calls that numbers that called the Kansas number called. Then they match that their bank, health and other records creating a three dimensional picture of the targets digital life.

The notion that that there is some quaint analyst at a switchboard listening in "by chance" goes against all that is known about the technology used by the NSA going back to the 1980's.

Where people get confused, are the standards people use for legal wiretaps used for courts and those used by the surveillance state. The latter by their nature are classified and not used in court.

The rules as implemented by the FBI and NSA are different. What we know is NSA intercepts are only made available to courts after being managed by the FBI. How the NSA implements the non court intercepts is largely out of any oversight.

The NSA follows Rumsfeld's philosophy about "known unknowns" they address that by knowing all.