The U.S. National Security Agency will no longer sift through emails, texts and other internet communications that mention targets of surveillance.<\/p>\n
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Credit to Author: Michael Kan| Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2017 07:01:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n The U.S. National Security Agency will no longer sift through emails, texts and other internet communications that mention targets of surveillance.<\/p>\n The change, which the NSA announced<\/a> on Friday, stops a controversial tactic that critics said violated U.S. citizens’ privacy rights.<\/p>\n The practice involved flagging communications where a foreign surveillance target was mentioned, even if that target wasn’t involved in the conversation. Friday\u2019s announcement means the NSA will stop collecting this data.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, this surveillance will now be limited to only those communications that are directly \u2018to\u2019 or \u2018from\u2019 a foreign intelligence target,\u201d the NSA said in a statement.<\/p>\n As part of that change, the NSA will delete most of the internet communications that were collected using this surveillance tactic.<\/p>\n The agency said it decided to stop some of the activities because of technological constraints, U.S. citizens\u2019 privacy interests, and difficulties with implementation.<\/p>\n The NSA said it made the change after reporting several incidents in which it inadvertently collected citizens’ communications while using this tactic. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the agency’s spying powers, has issued an order approving the agency’s narrower approach to data collection, the NSA said.<\/p>\n Privacy advocates applauded the move.<\/p>\n \u201cThis change ends a practice that could result in Americans’ communications being collected without a warrant merely for mentioning a foreign target,\u201d said U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, in a statement.<\/p>\n He plans to introduce legislation banning this kind of data collection.<\/p>\n Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden tweeted<\/a>: \u201cThis is likely the most substantive of the post-2013 NSA reforms, if the principle is applied to all other programs.\u201d<\/p>\n The NSA change specifically involves its upstream<\/a> surveillance collection, and not the agency\u2019s PRISM<\/a> program, which allegedly spies on U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n