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 The NSA relied on Executive Order 12333 more than it did on two
other laws that have been the focus of public debate following the
leaks exposing U.S. surveillance programs by former agency
contractor Edward Snowden, according to the papers released by the
ACLU.
The ACLU obtained the documents after filing a lawsuit last year
seeking information in connection with the order, which it said the
NSA was using to collect vast amounts of data worldwide,
"inevitably" including communications of U.S. citizens.
The order, signed in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, was intended
to give the government broad authority over surveillance of
international targets.
One of the documents obtained was a 2007 NSA manual citing the
executive order as "the primary source of NSA's foreign
intelligence-gathering authority."
A legal fact sheet on the memo produced in June 2013, two weeks
after Snowden's disclosures, said the NSA relied on the executive
order for the "majority" of its activities involving intelligence
gathered through signals interception.
Alex Abdo, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a blog post published on
Monday that the documents "confirm that the order, although not the
focus of the public debate, actually governs most of the NSA's
spying."
"Congress's reform efforts have not addressed the executive order,
and the bulk of the government's disclosures in response to the
Snowden revelations have conspicuously ignored the NSA's extensive
mandate under EO 12333," Abdo wrote.
Neither the NSA nor U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending
the lawsuit, responded to requests for comment Monday.
The ACLU's lawsuit, filed in December 2013 in New York, cited news
reports indicating that, under the order, the NSA is collecting data
on cell phone locations and email contact lists, as well as
information from Google Inc and Yahoo! Inc user accounts.
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In his blog post, Abdo said the documents made clear the government
is collecting information that goes beyond just terrorist threats.
The documents, he wrote, could also add credence to concerns the
government could use its "broad surveillance power to conduct
economic espionage or to spy on Americans it hoped to convert into
confidential informants."
An internal U.S. Defense Department presentation released in
response to the lawsuit said it could, under the order, collect
information on U.S. citizens or organizations in a number of
scenarios.
Those include if a commercial organization is believed to have ties
to foreign organizations or people and "potential sources of
assistance to intelligence activities," the document said.
The case is American Civil Liberties Union et al v. National
Security Agency et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New
York, No. 13-9198.
(Reporting by Aruna Viswanatha; editing by Gunna Dickson)
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