This is a category of disclosures related to global surveillance.
Court orders, memos and policy documents
Memorandum of understanding between the NSA and the Israel SIGINT National Unit (ISNU) April 2013 FISC Order demanding that Verizon hand over all telephony metadata to NSA. The order had been initially granted in May 2006. In 2009 the FISC discovered that the government had made repeated and substantial misrepresentations to the court about its use, and had routinely been "running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard for querying." It further concluded that the violations had been routine and systematic. Legal Justification of the bulk telephony metadata collection (officially released) 2009 NSA Procedures for Targeting Foreigners for Surveillance 2009 NSA Procedures for Minimizing collection on US Persons 2011 NSA Procedures for Minimizing collection on US Persons (officially released) Reference to a 2011 Change in the court-approved Minimization Procedures allowing analysts to run search queries using US persons' identifiers if there is "effective" oversight by NSA (it is not publicly known if such oversight has been established, or if any such searches have been conducted). The court order mentioned was later officially released. October 2011 Court decision finding NSA's upstream collection program, which collected tens of thousands of non-target communications, to have violated the law. It held, citing multiple Supreme Court precedents, that the Fourth Amendment applies to the contents of all communications, whatever the means (they are "papers"). It also finds that the NSA's minimization and targeting policies to be legally and/or constitutionally deficient, and recommends changes. (officially released). Additional findings: The collection of Upstream data had begun before a court order approving it, in violation of 50 USC § 1809(a), which makes it a crime to engage in, use or disseminate surveillance knowing, or having reason to know such surveillance was not authorized. March 2009 FISC ruling showing a consistent pattern of misrepresentations of the bulk telephone metadata collection program by the government to the Court. It also held that the data was being routinely queried in ways that did not meet "reasonable articulatable suspicion", demonstrating inadequate safeguards in the software and training of analysts. Showing that "thousands of violations resulted from the use of identifiers that were not "RAS-approved by analysts who were not even aware that they were accessing BR metadata," and that in 2006 "there was no single person [in the NSA] who had a complete understanding of the BR FISA system architecture," a situation which persisted until February 2009 or later. RAS is shorthand for Reasonable Articulatable Suspicion. The Court nonetheless reapproved the collection of bulk phone metadata, while mandating additional safeguards and training, and "end-to-end system engineering reviews," and reports from the review. (Officially released by court order) October 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 20 (PPD20), outlining cyberwarfare. 2007 Michael Mukasey memo proposing broader powers. April 2013 list of US Spying targets and topics by priority. The top priority countries are: Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea and Afghanistan. Germany, France, the European Union, and Japan are mid-level priorities; Italy and Spain rank lower. FY 2013 Intelligence "Black Budget" Summary. A memorandum of understanding concerning US sharing of raw SIGINT with Israel. The data has not been scrubbed to eliminate US persons, it asks Israel not to deliberately target US persons, however the agreement allows Israel to retain US person data for one full year. The memorandum is not legally binding. A separate document states "And there are other kinds of CI threats that are right on our midst. For example, one of NSA's biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.", it continues "Balancing the SIGINT exchange between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge. In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came and went, and with NSA's only true Third Party CT relationship being driven almost entirely driven by the needs of the partner." September 13, 2013 FISC Court order declassifying all the legal opinions relating to Section 215 of the Patriot Act written after May 2011 not already the subject of Freedom of Information Act litigation. The FISA Court ruled that the White House must identify the opinions in question by October 4, 2013. 1,000 pages of documents were released by James R. Clapper Jr.