<story><title>It&apos;s time to break up the NSA</title><url>http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/opinion/schneier-nsa-too-big/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>twoodfin</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put aside the question of data on U.S. citizens: I don&amp;#x27;t understand how in an era of burner phones and widespread encryption any intelligence agency can do without some bulk foreign surveillance. Say HUMINT gets its hands on a foreign bad guy&amp;#x27;s contact list. Odds are the most relevant information you&amp;#x27;d be able to extract is in the past, especially if the target knows you captured his list.&lt;p&gt;Is it really an &amp;quot;overreach&amp;quot; if the NSA can acquire the mobile phone records of Yemen &amp;quot;indiscriminately&amp;quot; and use the data to build social graphs for current and future (currently unknown) targets of interest?&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I don&amp;#x27;t mean to cast Schneier&amp;#x27;s argument uncharitably. He may very well make a distinction between &amp;quot;acceptable&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;overreaching&amp;quot; bulk surveillance, but if so he doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to outline it in this piece.</text></comment>
<story><title>It&apos;s time to break up the NSA</title><url>http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/opinion/schneier-nsa-too-big/index.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jobu</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Second, all surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a great idea in theory, but in the current age of global communications I&amp;#x27;m concerned that it&amp;#x27;s impossible to separate surveillance into &amp;quot;American&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;foreign&amp;quot;.  This gray area is what the NSA currently uses to circumvent the US Constitution, and I don&amp;#x27;t see how any other agency would handle it differently.</text></comment>