>One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.
>Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst.
"Generally" should be always.
How about they stop the illegal collection and then the illegal sharing cannot occur.
And then to add to the list. "Collect" should mean "obtain" and not "use", and "metadata" is actually a subset of, and not different from "data". And "transcripts" and "summaries" are actually a form "content". "US Citizen" mean's a person who lives in the US, not "51% likely based on this metric", and "direct access" does not depend on who owns the land in which the particular section of cable is buried. And the list goes on. These words mean something, and when 'always' slips to become 'generally' - we have a problem. And when the one doing the slipping is a titanic behemoth of the size of the NSA, with as little accountability as already exists, we have an even bigger problem.
When the words used to assure us are twisted and misused, then the assurance does little. Trust is hard to earn back. Especially when we intelligent owners (US citizens) of the mechanisms and powers are not given access to their actual processes, or even their legal justifications.
Face, meet palm
Same with torture and other unethical activities. Think you can save the city from nuclear destruction by torturing the brown-skinned guy? Sure, go for it. But you'd better hope you're right, because (at least in a just world) that's the only way you're staying out of prison for the rest of your life.
What about Americans who are 2, 3 or 4 degrees removed from suspected foreign agents?
Does 'looking' include automated processes that scan for, for lack of a better word, suspicious behavior?
That's an overly narrow construing of the word "information". As you well know, metadata and location bits are considered "information" by anyone except the pen & trap zealots.