The Senate, intended as a deliberative body, cannot deliberate when only the folks on the right committees are fully briefed, and the Ron Wyden types among them think what's happening is horribly wrong, but can't tell anyone why because it's illegal just to air the basic facts.

Secrecy Undermines the Ability of Congress to Function as the Framers Intended - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic

First-- as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked-- "When are you going to start-- stop beating your wife" kind of question, which is meaning not-- answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.

And again, to go back to my metaphor. What I was thinking of is looking at the Dewey Decimal numbers-- of those books in that metaphorical library-- to me, collection of U.S. persons' data would mean taking the book off the shelf and opening it up and reading it.

Apparently, "any data at all" does not include call record information, just content. Also,

And this has to do with of course somewhat of a semantic, perhaps some would say too-- too cute by half. But it is-- there are honest differences on the semantics of what-- when someone says "collection" to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.

"Collection" does not mean collection.

NBC News Clapper interview transcript

"I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk

Q: What do the leaked documents reveal?

A: "That the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.

IE its not about the program per say, its about the credibility of the political process.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again' | World news | guardian.co.uk

The wording here is cumbersome and typo pocked but this is an important observation:

Google Glass + NSA PRISM essentially amounts to a vision in which a foreign country is suddenly going to be flooded with American spy cameras. It seems easy to imagine any number of foreign governments having a problem with that idea.

More broadly, Google is already facing a variety of anti-trust issues in Europe, where basic economic nationalism is mixing with competition policy concerns. Basically, various European mapping and comparison and shopping firms don't want to be crushed by Google, and European officials are naturally sympathetic to the idea of not letting local firms be crushed by California-based ones. There is legitimate concern that U.S. tech companies are essentially a giant periscope for American intelligence agencies and seem like they'd be a very powerful new weapon in the hands of European companies that want to persuade EU authorities to shackle American firms.

Imagine if it had come out in the 1980s that Japanese intelligence agencies were tracking the location of ever Toyota and Honda vehicle, and then the big response from the Japanese government was to reassure people that Japanese citizens weren't being spied upon this way. There would have been—legitimately—massive political pressure to get Japanese cars out of foreign markets.

American dominance in the high-tech sector is first and foremost a source of national economic advantage, one that could be undone by excessive security involvement.

PRISM tech exports: Will NSA revelations block American companies abroad.

Apparently the word "collection" does not mean collection.

Asked by Wyden, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps collect-but not wittingly.”

Blair drew a distinction between the “collection” or mining of data on specific U.S. citizens by NSA and the massive trove of phone call information that was turned over to the NSA under a negotiated agreement among intelligence officials, the telecommunications companies and the FISA judges. The purpose of the FISA order was to store information in the event that U.S. intelligence agencies need to access it after getting specific intelligence that somebody in the U.S. might be tied to terrorism.  It is only at that point, he explained, that the NSA goes back to the court to get permission to mine or “collect” the data.  

Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans - Open Channel

By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records.

This is an important detail that was not apparent from the court document that was leaked. However, there are significant questions that this raises, particularly as the individual who signed this statement told Congress in March that the NSA was NOT collecting data on millions of Americans.

DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information

Back in February 2013, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an executive summary (PDF) of its findings to justify warrantless border searches of laptops. However, that summary did not include any substantial analysis of the reasoning the government provides.

On Wednesday, though, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the DHS released (PDF) its complete December 2011 Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Impact Assessment.

What is the government’s constitutionally based reasoning for such searches? Frankly, we don’t know. A lot of it is redacted.

On Page 18 of the 52-page document under the section entitled “First Amendment,” several paragraphs are completely blacked out.

Feds say they can search your laptop at the border but won’t say why | Ars Technica

The revelation that the FISA court has ordered Verizon Business to turn over to the NSA call records for all telephone calls, foreign and domestic, is the biggest revelation in a series of controversies over government surveillance that have ensued since 9/11. One problem that keeps creeping into these debates is that most people don't understand exactly how the courts interpret the Forth Amendment, and government spokespersons may, within the gap of that misunderstanding, make truthful statements that create misleading impressions among laypersons.

For example, consider this transcript of my own district's Congressman, Hank Johnson, grilling Gen. Alexander Keith on domestic surveillance. In the exchange, Gen. Alexander repeatedly denies that the NSA has the capability to do things like spy on the content of American's emails.

Given the revelations about Verizon, this must mean that Gen. Alexander was lying, right? Well, no, it doesn't. Nothing that Gen. Alexander said in this exchange is inconsistent with what has been revealed about Verizon.

In American law, there is a big distinction between government collection of "call records" and government collection of content information. It may be the case that the NSA is not collecting the content of American's domestic telecommunications, wholesale. If they aren't, all of the answers that Gen. Alexander provided Rep. Johnson may be true. However, it may be the case that the NSA is vacuuming up information about who called who. The legal barriers to doing so are much lower than the legal barriers to collecting content. A statement by a government official that content is not being collected or that content is not being monitored should not lead to the conclusion that call records are also not being collected or monitored.

Furthermore, The Fourth Amentment doesn't always require a warrant. The Fourth Amendment has two clauses. The first says there will be no "unreasonable" searches. The second sets the requirements for a warrant. The text doesn't explain when a warrant is required. Presumptively, a warrant is always required, but the courts have found a variety of contexts where they have seen fit to conclude that warrants aren't required.

One such context is "national security." Cases from 1960's and early 1970's may authorize warrantless surveillance for national security reasons involving foreign powers.

Another context regards business records such as the sort of "call records information" at issue with this Verizon revelation (Google "Third Party Doctrine.")

Collection by the government of call records information in national security contexts is regulated by acts of Congress - it is not considered to be unconstitu... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

This is potentially a huge story. If the NSA is getting all call records from every domestic call from Verizon, then that’s a very big deal.

The Volokh Conspiracy » Is Verizon Turning Over Records of Every Domestic Call to the NSA?