Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. And the rules show that the communications of lawyers and their clients may be retained if they contain foreign intelligence information, although dissemination must be approved by the NSA general counsel. Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which was renewed for five years last December, is the authority under which the NSA is allowed to collect large-scale data, including foreign communications and also communications between the US and other countries, provided the target is overseas. Those procedures state that the "NSA determines whether a person is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be outside the United States in light of the totality of the circumstances based on the information available with respect to that person, including information concerning the communications facility or facilities used by that person". "In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person," it states "a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person." The NSA is empowered to retain data for up to five years and the policy states "communications which may be retained include electronic communications acquired because of limitations on the NSA's ability to filter communications". If domestic communications lack significant foreign intelligence information, they must be promptly destroyed. If a target who was outside the United States enters the country, the monitoring must stop immediately. They conduct research in NSA databases, scrutinize Internet protocol addresses and target “Internet links that terminate in a foreign country.” 
 
 “When NSA proposes to direct surveillance at a target, it does so because NSA has already learned something about the target,” according to the targeting rules. It issues a certificate, good for one year, that allows the NSA to order a U.S. Internet or phone company to turn over over e-mails, phone calls and other communications related to a series of foreign targets, none of which the court approved individually.
– For weeks, President Obama and other senior officials have touted the special FISA court as a safeguard on NSA surveillance. Well, the Guardian and Washington Post have obtained top-secret documents submitted to and approved by that court that outline the rules and limits placed on the program. How reassuring they are may depend on your level of skepticism. The Glass Half Private reading: The documents outline many steps the NSA must take to be sure its would-be target is a foreigner, including reviewing all available data on the target and checking him against a huge database of phone numbers and email addresses known to belong to Americans to make sure he is a non-United States person. If the target enters the US, surveillance is halted immediately, even if the target is not a US citizen. The Glass Half Spied On reading: The NSA doesn't check each target with the court or anyone else; it gets broad authority to spy on anyone it feels meets its criteria, and if it has no data on a target's location, it can assume the target is overseas. It can retain any "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications that contain intelligence or info on criminal activity, and it can keep data that could involve US persons for up to five years. The court issues broad, bulk warrants; one seen by the Guardian was only a paragraph long and unburdened by legal rationale. And any foreigner is fair game to be targeted, whether suspected of wrongdoing or not. The Guardian also points out that these rules only apply to the chunk of NSA activities authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bulk seizing of call records occurs under the Patriot Act. Civil liberties groups are among those not calmed by the disclosures. "What’s most striking about the targeting procedures is the discretion they confer on the NSA," says a Brennan Center for Justice exec. In an attempt to reassure critics, President Obama will today hold his first meeting with his rarely heard from Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the AP reports.