What's Inside the New Domestic Spying Bill

There's been a whole lot of uninformed chatter about what's in the Democrats' new domestic spying bill. *Threat Level's *Ryan Singel, who's broken many of the most important stories on the issue, sets us straight on what the new proposed rules say. Bottom line:

...the bill gives the NSA the ability to install wiretapping equipment in U.S. telecom switches or in the servers of U.S. email providers without getting a court order, but can only do so when they already know exactly what conversations they want to capture, rather than what person, email address or phone number they want to track. In other words, they have to know that known foreigner A is calling known foreigner B and that's what they get to tap without court oversight. They cannot just target every call to and from known foreigner A using spy equipment inside the United States. (Outside the U.S., there's no limits on what the NSA can listen in on.)

Outside of that case, the NSA has to go to the spy court for permission to wiretap inside the U.S.

If the spy agency suspects that one of the targets in this scenario is outside of the country or is a foreigner? Go to the court.

If the NSA wants to get all of the communications to an email address (provided by a U.S. company) of a suspected spy or terrorist that the NSA believes is outside of the country? Go to the court.

If the NSA wants to wiretap every call to known foreigner A that passes through a U.S.switch.? Go to the court.