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Project MINARET

Project MINARET was a Sensitive SIGINT operation conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) from 1967 to 1973, entailing the warrantless interception and analysis of international telegraphic and telephonic communications to and from the United States for monitoring individuals and organizations on watch lists suspected of foreign-linked threats to national security, including civil disturbances, anti-war activities, demonstrations, and narcotics trafficking.^[1]^[2] The program formalized earlier watch-list processes in 1969, drawing names from agencies like the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, while NSA supplemented with aliases and organizational identifiers to enhance targeting efficiency, ultimately encompassing about 1,650 U.S. persons—peaking at 800 active names—and generating roughly 3,900 reports disseminated without standard serialization or agency attribution under TOP SECRET classification.^[1] Although it yielded tangible results, such as averting a major terrorist incident and drug shipments, MINARET's focus on domestic figures amid Vietnam-era unrest raised profound Fourth Amendment concerns over privacy invasions absent judicial warrants or explicit statutory authority.^[1] Exposed by the Church Committee in 1975, the initiative was terminated in 1973 by NSA Director Lewis Allen following legal review deeming it a constitutional violation, prompting recommendations for legislative oversight and procedural reforms to curb intelligence overreach.^[2]^[1]

Origins and Development

Precursor Programs and Initial Authorization

Project SHAMROCK, established in August 1945 by the U.S. Army's Signal Security Agency, served as the primary precursor to MINARET by enabling the bulk interception and copying of international telegraphic messages from major U.S. carriers including Western Union, RCA, and ITT. This program, which persisted into the NSA era after 1952, amassed vast quantities of raw communications data focused on foreign traffic entering or leaving the United States, forming the foundational dataset that MINARET would analyze through targeted watch-list queries.^[3]^[4] Informal NSA watch-listing efforts predated MINARET, emerging in the early 1960s to monitor potential threats such as Cuban-related travel and contacts amid heightened Cold War tensions. The program was formally initiated in 1967 under NSA Director Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter, who held the position from June 1965 to July 1969, as federal agencies began submitting names for surveillance to detect foreign intelligence operations.^[1]^[5] Initial authorization for MINARET's watch-list activities came in 1967 from Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the Secretary of Defense, bypassing direct White House approval, on the rationale of countering foreign subversion within U.S. communications networks. These approvals were predicated on the NSA's mandate to verify whether foreign powers, such as the Soviet Union or Cuba, were influencing or recruiting U.S. citizens through intercepted international messages.^[1]^[6]

Expansion During the Vietnam Era

In 1969, the surveillance effort was formally designated Project MINARET, reflecting its maturation into a structured operation focused on international communications of potential security risks. This renaming coincided with a marked expansion of watch lists, which grew from several hundred entries in the mid-1960s to encompass over 1,600 U.S. persons by 1973.^[7] The surge was propelled by intensifying domestic turmoil, including widespread Vietnam War protests and civil rights activism, where intelligence agencies identified patterns of foreign radical involvement that posed causal risks to national stability, such as Soviet and Cuban financial and logistical support for American radical left organizations aimed at undermining U.S. military efforts.^[8] To populate these lists, MINARET incorporated nominations from allied programs, notably the FBI's COINTELPRO, which disrupted perceived subversive networks through targeted investigations, and the CIA's CHAOS, a domestic-focused initiative tracking anti-war dissent with suspected overseas ties.^[9] These inputs supplied names of individuals and groups exhibiting behaviors indicative of foreign-directed agitation, prioritizing those with communications patterns suggesting coordination beyond domestic grievance, such as travel to adversarial states or receipt of propaganda materials.^[10] By the early 1970s, MINARET reached peak operational tempo, generating unserialized intelligence summaries—formatted to mimic human intelligence reports for discretion—and distributing them to recipients in the White House, FBI, CIA, and elements of military intelligence to inform counter-subversion strategies. This dissemination, often exceeding routine channels, underscored the program's role in addressing hybrid threats where ideological dissent intersected with verifiable foreign instrumentation, rather than monitoring protected speech in isolation.^[11]

Operational Framework

Surveillance Methods and Technical Capabilities

Project MINARET utilized signals intelligence (SIGINT) derived from international communications intercepted through the SHAMROCK program, which began in August 1945 and involved voluntary cooperation with U.S. telecommunications firms including RCA Global Communications, ITT World Communications, and Western Union International. These entities supplied copies of telegrams transiting the United States, initially captured on microfilm and paper tapes, with a shift to magnetic tapes by the early 1960s that enabled more efficient handling of the approximately 150,000 messages received monthly in later years.^[12] The program also incorporated monitoring of international telephone circuits, such as U.S.-South America links from 1970 to 1973, leveraging existing foreign intelligence collection channels where at least one endpoint was abroad.^[12]^[13] Intercepted data underwent selection via watch lists comprising names, aliases, addresses, and related identifiers, employing a comprehensive "vacuum cleaner" method that captured all traffic on designated links before filtering. Early processing relied on manual sorting, but by the mid-1960s, NSA developed electronic capabilities at its Fort Meade facility for automated name-matching and rudimentary keyword searches on magnetic tapes delivered daily.^[12] Tapes were duplicated in a secure New York facility under Project LPMEDLEY from November 1966 to August 1973, processed for hits, and returned to providers the same day, with analysts conducting further manual review of flagged content.^[12] This integration with SHAMROCK's infrastructure formalized under MINARET's charter in July 1969 allowed exploitation of bulk hauls without dedicated interception hardware.^[12]^[13] Dissemination occurred through roughly 2,000 "raw take" intelligence reports generated between 1969 and 1973, classified Top Secret and frequently unserialized to expedite sharing among select recipients while evading standard NSA serialization protocols and oversight.^[12] These reports conveyed unedited or minimally summarized intercepts, prioritizing speed over formal controls.^[12] Technological limitations of the 1960s and 1970s era included batch processing delays inherent to tape-based systems, precluding real-time monitoring or analysis.^[12] Coverage hinged on foreign communications routing through U.S. carriers or gateways, restricting scope to traffic voluntarily provided by partners rather than comprehensive global capture.^[12] Early computerization, while advancing from manual methods, remained rudimentary, focused on basic pattern matching amid voluminous data without advanced analytics.^[12]

Target Selection and Watch Lists

The selection of targets for Project MINARET watch lists was driven by nominations from U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, and State Department, as well as occasional White House submissions, prioritizing individuals and entities with suspected foreign intelligence connections that could threaten national security.^[1] These nominations required evidence of activities such as contacts with foreign agents, travel to hostile nations like the Soviet Union or Cuba, or involvement in international subversive networks, ensuring a focus on transnational threats rather than purely domestic dissent. The NSA did not independently generate targets but processed agency-provided "watch list" entries as selection criteria for scanning international telegram traffic, with analytic amplifications added only to meet operational requirements for foreign intelligence derivation.^[1] Early watch lists, established in the mid-1960s as an extension of precursor programs, concentrated on limited categories like potential presidential assassins and defectors with access to sensitive information, reflecting immediate counterintelligence priorities tied to personal and governmental protection.^[6] By the late 1960s, amid rising domestic unrest including urban riots and militant activities, the criteria evolved to include broader groups such as black nationalist organizations and foreign radicals suspected of receiving external direction, justified by intelligence on possible links to adversarial powers providing training, funding, or propaganda support. This expansion maintained an intelligence-driven rationale, requiring documented foreign nexuses to warrant inclusion, though it increased the volume of domestic nominations processed by the NSA. Over the program's lifespan from 1967 to 1973, approximately 1,650 U.S. citizens were cumulatively added to MINARET watch lists through these interagency channels, with the active list peaking at around 800 domestic names, about one-third derived from narcotics-related foreign trafficking intelligence.^[5]^[1] Names underwent periodic interagency reviews for relevance, but de-listings remained rare—totaling fewer than 100 instances—owing to persistent unresolved foreign intelligence indicators and the need for consensus among nominating agencies to avoid compromising ongoing investigations.^[6] This methodology emphasized verifiable empirical leads from counterintelligence operations, providing a structured filter against unsubstantiated or ideologically motivated additions.

Interagency and International Collaboration

The National Security Agency (NSA) coordinated Project MINARET watch lists primarily through inputs from other U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, positioning itself as the central processor of international telegraphic and voice communications involving designated individuals and organizations. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served as the primary provider of names, focusing on domestic security threats, while the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contributed foreign intelligence leads, and the Secret Service supplied protective intelligence details; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and military services occasionally forwarded relevant targets, particularly those linked to defense matters.^[6]^[1] This interagency mechanism, initiated around 1967, enabled the NSA to disseminate summarized intelligence reports back to originating agencies without formal dissemination controls, streamlining analysis during heightened Cold War tensions.^[6] Internationally, MINARET benefited from signals intelligence sharing under the UKUSA Agreement, a postwar pact formalizing cooperation between the NSA and the United Kingdom's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). GCHQ provided supplementary intercepts captured at UK-based monitoring stations, such as those targeting transatlantic cables, which complemented NSA collections and expanded coverage of targets with overseas connections.^[14] This exchange, rooted in mutual resource pooling amid resource constraints, underscored the program's reliance on allied contributions to monitor global communications flows without duplicating efforts.^[15] Dissemination to U.S. military commands remained limited, confined to instances supporting operational security during Vietnam War deployments, where intercepts informed threat assessments for troop movements and base protections. Absent dedicated interagency oversight committees, these collaborations proceeded via informal channels and verbal understandings, prioritizing expeditious data flow over procedural formalities to address immediate national security imperatives.^[6]

Key Targets and Activities

Domestic Individuals and Groups

Project MINARET targeted U.S. citizens and residents whose international communications were deemed potentially relevant to national security threats, particularly those involving anti-Vietnam War activism, civil rights advocacy, or suspected foreign influence. The program, operating from the early 1960s until 1973, focused on intercepting telegrams, phone calls, and other overseas signals linked to a "watch list" compiled from inputs by agencies like the FBI, CIA, and State Department, with around 75 names active at any given time by the late 1960s.^[10]^[16] Prominent individuals monitored included civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whose overseas calls were intercepted amid FBI assessments of communist infiltration in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, including reported contacts with foreign entities sympathetic to Soviet interests.^[10]^[17] Boxer Muhammad Ali faced surveillance due to his public opposition to the Vietnam War draft and communications potentially tied to international anti-war networks.^[16]^[18] Actress and activist Jane Fonda was targeted following her 1972 trip to Hanoi, where intercepts captured her radio broadcasts from North Vietnam criticizing U.S. policy and coordinating with Vietnamese officials.^[16]^[18] Other domestic figures on the watch list encompassed civil rights executive Whitney Young, whose international travel and advocacy drew scrutiny for possible foreign alignments, and journalists like New York Times correspondent Hedrick Smith, suspected of relaying or amplifying propaganda from communist sources during Moscow postings.^[10]^[18] U.S. senators, including Frank Church, were also intercepted in calls abroad, often in contexts of congressional inquiries into foreign policy that intersected with watch list criteria.^[18] Groups indirectly represented through their leaders or affiliates included anti-war organizations like those tied to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), where international coordination—such as meetings with North Vietnamese representatives or European radicals—was flagged in declassified intercepts.^[10] The Black Panther Party's overseas communications, particularly those involving Huey Newton's exile in Cuba and Algeria in 1971, triggered monitoring for links to foreign revolutionary movements providing arms or funding.^[19] Declassified records indicate that while many targets engaged in peaceful protest, a subset—estimated at under 20% based on Church Committee reviews of watch list nominations—involved documented violent acts or direct subversive efforts, such as SDS factions' bombings or Panthers' armed confrontations with police, justifying inclusion under criteria for foreign-directed disruption.^[10]^[18]

Foreign Connections and Intelligence Value

Project MINARET primarily aimed to detect foreign influence on U.S. antiwar activists and civil rights figures through international communications intercepts, targeting potential coordination with entities such as North Vietnam, Cuba, or Soviet-backed organizations. Declassified records from the Church Committee indicate that the program yielded limited evidence of such direct foreign orchestration or support for domestic dissent.^[12] Between 1969 and 1973, MINARET generated approximately 2,000 reports disseminated to other intelligence agencies, averaging several hundred annually, with roughly 10% involving exchanges between two U.S. persons. These outputs contributed to broader signals intelligence (SIGINT) efforts by flagging dual-use communications where apparent domestic activity overlapped with overseas patterns suggestive of espionage or propaganda. However, assessments consistently described the intelligence value as marginal, with few high-value discoveries disrupting foreign operations.^[12] NSA official Raymond Wannall testified that MINARET produced "very little in the way of good product," while an internal review echoed that "not much was turned up on foreign influence," despite occasional protective leads, such as Secret Service applications. The program's role in identifying masked foreign threats remained ancillary to its primary domestic focus, with no documented major espionage or propaganda pipeline disruptions attributed directly to its yields.^[12]^[6]

Exposure and Shutdown

Internal Reviews and Early Concerns

Internal NSA assessments identified significant legal and procedural flaws in Project MINARET, with an agency historical account later describing the operation as "disreputable if not outright illegal" owing to its warrantless interception and dissemination of communications involving U.S. persons without standard safeguards or judicial oversight. Agency lawyers and officials involved understood these irregularities from the outset, viewing the program's ad hoc watch-listing and unserialized reporting as deviations from established signals intelligence protocols designed to minimize domestic incidental collection.^[10] Despite these self-recognized issues, MINARET continued under successive directors amid executive branch imperatives to track foreign-linked threats during heightened domestic instability, including urban riots in 1967–1968 and escalating anti-Vietnam War activism, which intelligence assessments attributed partly to communist or other overseas influences.^[10] Internal rationales emphasized the national security necessity of monitoring international telegraphic and telephonic traffic for patterns of subversion, even as participants debated the balance between constitutional protections—particularly against unreasonable searches—and the urgency of preempting potential violence or espionage.^[10] Such concerns manifested in periodic operational restraints; for instance, upon reviewing inherited programs, NSA leadership under Lt. Gen. Lew Allen in August 1973 temporarily suspended report dissemination under MINARET for legal evaluation, underscoring persistent unease over Fourth Amendment compliance absent explicit statutory authority or warrants.^[20] Earlier directors, attuned to similar implications, had imposed informal limits on targeting and sharing to mitigate risks, though operational demands from interagency partners often prompted resumption.^[10]

Church Committee Investigations

The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church, was established on January 27, 1975, amid heightened congressional scrutiny of executive branch intelligence practices following the Watergate scandal and revelations of domestic spying by agencies like the CIA and FBI.^[21] The committee's investigations into National Security Agency operations, conducted through staff interviews, agency briefings, and review of classified documents, uncovered Project MINARET as a top-secret program that had systematically intercepted international telegraphic and telephonic communications involving U.S. persons on a "watch list" disseminated by other intelligence entities.^[12] Committee proceedings revealed that MINARET, which operated from 1967 until its internal suspension, processed raw signals intelligence selected via keywords, names, and organizations flagged for potential foreign intelligence value, often extending to purely domestic advocacy groups opposed to U.S. policies in Vietnam. Testimony from NSA officials, including Director Lew Allen Jr., and examination of internal charters confirmed the program's reliance on voluntary cooperation from telecommunications firms without statutory basis or interagency protocols for minimizing incidental collection on non-foreign targets.^[12] A key procedural finding emerged from declassified correspondence: on October 4, 1973, NSA Director Allen had informed Attorney General Elliot Richardson of MINARET's scope, prompting Richardson to order its immediate shutdown after a Justice Department legal assessment deemed the watch list targeting incompatible with Fourth Amendment protections absent judicial review.^[12] This 1973 termination, previously unknown outside executive channels, underscored operational secrecy but also highlighted prior years of unchecked expansion, with the committee documenting over 3,500 report disseminations under MINARET between 1969 and 1973.^[10] The Church Committee report criticized MINARET's structural deficiencies, particularly the complete absence of judicial oversight or probable cause standards for initiating surveillance on U.S. persons' overseas links, which allowed executive requests from entities like the FBI to drive selections without adversarial process or congressional notification.^[12] In response, the committee issued interim recommendations in late 1975 for legislative mandates requiring warrants for electronic surveillance of citizens and stricter guidelines on NSA domestic activities, influencing executive orders curtailing similar programs.^[22] Public hearings and partial declassifications began in 1975 as the committee released redacted volumes of its final report in 1976, exposing MINARET's mechanics to curb future abuses; more extensive NSA internal histories and operational records were declassified in 2013 following mandatory review requests by the National Security Archive, confirming the program's "disreputable if not outright illegal" nature per NSA's own assessments.^[10]

Controversies and Assessments

Allegations of Illegality and Overreach

Project MINARET contravened the National Security Agency's foundational charter, established in 1952, which explicitly barred the agency from conducting domestic surveillance activities and restricted its operations to signals intelligence targeting foreign powers and their agents.^[23] The program, initiated in 1967, systematically intercepted international telegraphic and telephonic communications involving U.S. citizens placed on watch lists, often without judicial warrants or probable cause, in an era predating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would later impose oversight on such activities.^[7] Declassified internal NSA assessments in 1975 described these operations as "disreputable if not outright illegal," citing violations of constitutional protections against unwarranted searches.^[16] ^[10] The scale of collection amplified concerns over overreach, with watch lists encompassing approximately 1,600 U.S. citizens and groups by the program's peak, leading to the generation of over 3,900 intelligence reports disseminated within the U.S. government.^[24] These lists, derived from inputs by agencies like the FBI and CIA, frequently included individuals with tenuous or unverified foreign connections, resulting in incidental captures of purely domestic communications lacking national security relevance.^[7] Absent modern digital minimization procedures, such interceptions raised privacy intrusions on non-threat actors, including routine monitoring of anti-war activists and civil rights figures without evidence of criminal intent by program operators.^[10] Allegations of political misuse surfaced prominently, with declassified documents revealing surveillance of U.S. senators, such as Frank Church—who chaired the investigating committee—and journalists like Art Buchwald, alongside congressmen and critics of Vietnam War policies.^[18] ^[10] Targets often lacked demonstrable foreign nexus, prompting claims that the program served domestic political ends rather than genuine intelligence imperatives, though no formal charges of criminal misconduct were pursued against participants.^[16] Reports were shared with unauthorized recipients in some instances, exacerbating risks of abuse, as evidenced by Church Committee inquiries into intelligence dissemination practices.^[21]

National Security Rationales and Potential Benefits

Project MINARET emerged amid acute Cold War imperatives, where U.S. intelligence agencies confronted pervasive Soviet espionage and subversion efforts aimed at exploiting domestic divisions. The program's defenders emphasized its role in detecting foreign intelligence threats embedded within U.S.-linked international communications, particularly during the Vietnam era when protests coincided with documented foreign meddling. Soviet active measures, including KGB and GRU funding for antiwar groups and counterculture organizations, sought to amplify unrest and erode American foreign policy cohesion, justifying vigilant monitoring of cross-border links to preempt such influences.^[25]^[26] Interagency reliance on MINARET-derived reports underscores potential counterintelligence benefits, as the NSA disseminated intelligence to the FBI and CIA for leads on foreign radical suspects and threats to national security. These outputs supported efforts to identify international ties in groups associated with civil disturbances, such as those involving radical elements with overseas connections, thereby aiding in the disruption of potential subversive networks without relying solely on domestic collection. While specific preempted threats remain classified, the program's continuation until 1973 and integration into operations like CIA's CHAOS reflect perceived operational value in addressing hybrid threats blending foreign direction with internal agitation.^[27]^[28] By focusing on the international "legs" of communications—such as telegrams and calls to or from abroad—MINARET aligned with the NSA's core foreign signals intelligence mandate, minimizing direct intrusion into purely domestic exchanges compared to broader warrantless programs. This approach mirrored lawful overseas intercepts where U.S. persons' involvement arises incidentally through foreign targets, arguing for its necessity in an era of asymmetric threats from state-sponsored subversion. Critiques often apply hindsight bias, discounting validated risks like KGB-orchestrated disinformation and influence campaigns targeting U.S. racial tensions and protests, as corroborated by defectors and declassified records including the Mitrokhin Archive's revelations of systematic efforts to foment domestic discord.^[28]^[29]

Legal and Historical Legacy

Influence on Subsequent Reforms

The revelations of Project MINARET's warrantless interception and dissemination of U.S. persons' international communications, as detailed in the Church Committee's 1976 report, directly catalyzed the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on October 25, 1978.^[28]^[30] This legislation established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review applications for electronic surveillance targeting U.S. persons for foreign intelligence purposes, requiring probable cause determinations and judicial oversight to prevent the kinds of unchecked domestic incidental collection seen in MINARET, where over 1,600 Americans were watchlisted without individualized warrants.^[31] FISA's framework, including minimization procedures to limit retention and dissemination of non-pertinent U.S. person data, addressed MINARET's core overreach by institutionalizing safeguards against abuse while preserving foreign signals intelligence capabilities.^[32] The Church Committee's exposure of MINARET also prompted structural reforms in congressional oversight, leading to the creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on May 19, 1976, followed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in February 1977.^[21] These permanent committees were established to provide continuous legislative review of intelligence operations, replacing ad hoc investigations with mandated briefings and authorization processes for covert activities, in direct response to the lack of accountability revealed in programs like MINARET, which operated with minimal interagency or White House scrutiny.^[33] Internally, the NSA responded to MINARET's shutdown in 1975 by issuing restrictive guidelines under Director T. Philip Davidson in 1976, which prohibited watch-listing or dissemination of U.S. person identifiers unless tied to validated foreign intelligence objectives, effectively curtailing manual, name-based targeting absent legal predicates.^[12] These United States Signals Intelligence Directives (USSIDs), particularly USSID 18 on handling U.S. person information, formalized protections against the discretionary selection processes that characterized MINARET, emphasizing procedural compliance over expansive domestic monitoring.^[33]

Comparisons to Modern Surveillance Programs

Project MINARET shared structural similarities with contemporary programs authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), particularly in targeting foreign entities while incidentally acquiring communications involving U.S. persons. Like MINARET's watchlisting of suspected radicals and anti-war figures for intercepts with overseas contacts, Section 702 permits targeted surveillance of non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad to gather foreign intelligence, resulting in incidental collection of U.S. persons' data when they communicate with those targets.^[34]^[35] This parallel underscores a continuity in foreign-focused signals intelligence practices, where domestic content arises secondarily from lawful overseas targeting rather than primary domestic surveillance.^[36] However, post-FISA reforms introduced substantive differences in oversight, procedures, and transparency absent in MINARET's operations. MINARET operated without judicial warrants or statutory authorization, relying on executive directives and internal NSA dissemination lists that expanded to over 5,900 names by 1973, often without evidentiary thresholds for inclusion.^[3] In contrast, Section 702 requires annual certifications approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), detailed targeting procedures to ensure foreign focus, and agency-specific minimization guidelines that limit retention, dissemination, and querying of U.S. persons' information—such as requiring destruction of non-foreign intelligence data within five years unless exceptions apply.^[37]^[38] Additionally, modern programs mandate compliance reporting to Congress and public transparency via Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) summaries, contrasting MINARET's complete opacity until Church Committee exposure in 1975. Debates on efficacy highlight evolutions driven by technological scale and threat adaptation, cautioning against conflating MINARET's unchecked overreach with current frameworks. The Church Committee assessed MINARET as yielding minimal actionable intelligence despite monitoring thousands, citing a "multiplier effect" that amplified low-value domestic intercepts without proportional security gains.^[39] Section 702 collections, by comparison, have empirically contributed to disrupting specific threats, such as identifying Najibullah Zazi's 2009 bomb plot through foreign-targeted intercepts, with ODNI data indicating over 200 terrorism-related disruptions annually in recent years.^[40] These outcomes reflect lawful calibrations to digital communication volumes, where volume-based targeting under judicial guardrails addresses encryption and evasion tactics unavailable in MINARET's analog era, though critics argue incidental U.S. data volumes—estimated in tens of thousands of communications—still risk abuse without warrant requirements for domestic queries.^[41]^[42]

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Mar 1, 2017 · Section 702 surveillance also helped the government to identify Najibullah Zazi. Id. In. September 2009, the NSA used 702 surveillance to ...
[41]
How Many U.S. Persons Does Section 702 Spy On? The ODNI ...
Oct 22, 2024 · While Section 702 prohibits the NSA from intentionally targeting Americans with this mass surveillance, these agencies routinely acquire a huge ...
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Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act / FISA Section 702 - INTEL.gov
FISA Section 702 enables targeted collection of foreign intelligence on non-US persons outside the US, not US persons, and is not bulk collection.