No no, your packets don't have to leave the US. They just have to be going to the same server as the guy from Germany. Social graph contact node exploration is what they do for fun and profit, 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon and all that.
Whats more, if you really get down to the technicalities, they have taps at all the major fiber nodes domestically, collect that information, but supposedly it's not collection in NSA terminology unless they look at it after they collect, which is just the most back-asswards way of arbitrarily defining terms as I can think.
So in reality, all your packets, even the encrypted ones, belong to them. Become a high target node on the graph for any reason, and expect your data to have a "7 year storage" tag, so they can focus your data and walk the cat back later.
Yes, the surveillance state is real, and it sets up what William Binney calls the "turn-key totalitarian state". FOSS and encryption will save the computer literate, but the masses are in for rude surprises.
Both you and that which you reply to are incorrect. Deliberate surveillance of domestic communications of any persons or international communications of U.S. persons without judicial approval is unlawful. Nonpublic information regarding U.S. persons incidentally captured in foreign surveillance must be minimized.
Surveillance state may be real, and we all know what has actually been going on (to include massive interception and storage of so-called metadata of domestic U.S. communication on a vast scale), but that doesn't change the fact that U.S. surveillance of foreigners located in the U.S., or of communications of U.S. persons that take international paths, is flat-out illegal without judicial approval.
What is really needed (barring a codified policy change by the legislature and executive), is some meaningful restraint from the Supreme Court on government intrusion into so-called metadata collection. We've come a long way since the pen register.
That was your point, but the replies by x5n1 and arca_vorago to which rebutting, misrepresented the status quo as legally permitting surveillance of U.S. persons transiting international boundaries. It does not.
Whats more, if you really get down to the technicalities, they have taps at all the major fiber nodes domestically, collect that information, but supposedly it's not collection in NSA terminology unless they look at it after they collect, which is just the most back-asswards way of arbitrarily defining terms as I can think.
So in reality, all your packets, even the encrypted ones, belong to them. Become a high target node on the graph for any reason, and expect your data to have a "7 year storage" tag, so they can focus your data and walk the cat back later.
Yes, the surveillance state is real, and it sets up what William Binney calls the "turn-key totalitarian state". FOSS and encryption will save the computer literate, but the masses are in for rude surprises.