FOXNews.com: NSA surveillance reach broader than publicly acknowledged

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NSA surveillance reach broader than publicly acknowledged Aug 21st 2013, 04:00 Published August 21, 2013 FoxNews.com FILE - This June 6, 2013 file photo shows the sign outside the National Security Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. (AP Photo) The National Security Agency's surveillance network has the capacity to spy on 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, The Wall Street Journal reports.  Citing current and former NSA officials for the 75 percent figure, the paper reported that the agency can observe more of Americans' online communications than officials have publicly acknowledged.  The NSA's system of programs that filter communications, achieved with the help of telecommunications companies, is designed to look for communications that either start or end abroad, or happen to pass through the U.S. between foreign countries. However, the officials told the Journal that the system's reach is so broad, that it is more likely that purely domestic communications will be intercepted as a byproduct of the hunt for foreign ones.  The system works by using algorithms that act as filters, designed to let high-value information through amidst more benign chatter. However, after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, a former to intelligence official told the Journal that the government changed its definition of "reasonable" intelligence collection, enabling the NSA to widen the holes in the "filtering" system.  The NSA programs described by the Journal differ from the programs described by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in a series of leaks earlier this summer. Snowden described a program to acquire Americans' phone records, as well as another program, known as PRISM, that made requests from Internet companies for stored data. By contrast, the Internet monitoring systems have the capability to track almost any online activity, so long as it is covered by a broad court order.  The NSA programs are overseen and approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. An NSA spokeswoman told the Journal that its actions were both legal and respectful of Americans' privacy. In a statement made to Reuters, the NSA repeated the assertion, saying, "We defend the United States from such threats while fiercely working to protect the privacy rights of U.S. persons. ''It's not either/or. It's both."

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