NSA Shares Docs Containing Citizen Data With Israel, Snowden Leak Reveals

A new document pilfered by Edward Snowden — and likely leaked to the media a while ago now, based on some terms Snowden has agreed to — has been revealed by The Guardian today, in which NSA and Israeli data sharing is detailed. In particular, the documents show that the NSA "routinely shares" what is called raw intelligence data with Israel that could contain emails and other data on US citizens.

Furthremore, this information sharing is done essentially without limitation, with Israel not being held to any legal limitations on what it can use the data for. Such data is the result from interception activities by the United States spy agency, with the NSA having entered into the agreement to provide the data with the foreign nation.

According to the Obama administration, intelligence of this sort is subjected to safeguards intended to keep the information of US citizens safe, something referred to as minimization. Per the documents leaked by Snowden, this hasn't been the case, with the intelligence provided to Israel being "raw" and not yet subjected to the minimization procedures.

Because of this, the intelligence shuttled to Israel could end up including some personal communications from US citizens. The documents show that Israel has agreed not to use the data in the intelligence to target US citizens, but there is nothing legally binding the nation to its word. This follows closely after documents released yesterday showed the NSA having had violated court standards for the duration of three years.

SOURCE: The Guardian

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