<i>Note that this is covered by one of the NSA&#x27;s &quot;creative reinterpretations&quot;; they pretend that the data isn&#x27;t &quot;captured&quot; until someone actually looks the data up in XKEYSCORE. This is patently absurd.</i><p>You&#x27;re the NSA, trying to gather information foreign agents in the United States. You have access to some firehose of network packets, some of which may include communication between such agents and their home nations, but most of which is purely domestic. You also lack the technology to pull the needles out of the haystack in real time.<p>Why is it &quot;patently absurd&quot; to retain a window of such data for long enough to identify the communications of interest and discard the rest? Is there an alternative?