It's time to break up the NSA
This is where the NSA overreaches: collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately, and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately.Put aside the question of data on U.S. citizens: I don'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's contact list. Odds are the most relevant information you'd be able to extract is in the past, especially if the target knows you captured his list.Is it really an "overreach" if the NSA can acquire the mobile phone records of Yemen "indiscriminately" and use the data to build social graphs for current and future (currently unknown) targets of interest?EDIT: I don't mean to cast Schneier's argument uncharitably. He may very well make a distinction between "acceptable" and "overreaching" bulk surveillance, but if so he doesn't seem to outline it in this piece.