NSA stops collecting emails from Americans about foreign targets

The NSA will stop massively collecting emails and text messages from Americans reporting foreigners under surveillance. Sources reported this to The New York Times on Friday.

The paper writes that the NSA will stop collecting to comply with rules imposed on the agency by the Fisa court in 2011. The NSA collected the messages with names in them along with other messages at the time. This was due to the way in which internet companies bundled the messages, according to the newspaper. If one of the bundled messages contained a name of a person under surveillance, all the messages in the bundle were intercepted. It is said to be one of the ‘most disputed forms of surveillance by the NSA’.

The service reported in 2011 that more emails were being intercepted, after which the Fisa court ruled that this constituted a violation of the fundamental rights of citizens. The NSA then suggested storing the messages in a special repository that its employees would not normally have access to. The court agreed to this. The sources tell the paper that the NSA reported to the court last year that its employees were not adhering to the agreed rules. The agency then proposed to discontinue the practice completely, after there was a delay in re-approving the collection.

In 2013, Edward Snowden’s revelations revealed that the NSA was intercepting emails to and from the US. In response to the current news leave the whistleblower via Twitter know that “the change may be the most substantive change the NSA has made since 2013, provided the principle is applied to other programs.” He also points out that Obama at the time denied that the NSA intercepted e-mails from Americans.