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NSA’s Hack Of Google And Yahoo Traces Back To Rea­gan Exec­u­tive Order
Novem­ber 20, 2013 4:55 PM

SAN JOSE (AP) – Back when Yahoo was some­thing hollered at a rodeo and no one could con­ceive of Googling any­thing, Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan signed an exec­u­tive order that extend­ed the pow­er of U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies over­seas, allow­ing broad­er sur­veil­lance of non‑U.S. sus­pects. At the time, no one imag­ined he was grant­i­ng author­i­ty to spy on what became known as Sil­i­con Val­ley.

But recent reports that the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency secret­ly broke into com­mu­ni­ca­tions on Yahoo and Google over­seas have tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, pri­va­cy advo­cates and even nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­po­nents call­ing for a re-exam­i­na­tion of Reagan’s order and oth­er intel­li­gence laws.

Experts sug­gest a leg­isla­tive update is long over­due to clear up what Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion legal direc­tor Cindy Cohn calls “lots of big gray areas.”

With the coop­er­a­tion of for­eign allies, the NSA is poten­tial­ly gain­ing access to every email sent or received abroad, or between peo­ple abroad, from Google and Yahoo’s email ser­vices, as well as any­thing in Google Docs, Maps or Voice, accord­ing to a series of arti­cles in the Wash­ing­ton Post. It’s impos­si­ble to know how many of Google and Yahoo’s col­lec­tive 1.8 bil­lion accounts are affect­ed, but in a sin­gle 30-day peri­od last year, field col­lec­tors processed and ware­housed more than 180 mil­lion new records – rang­ing from “meta­da­ta,” which would indi­cate who sent or received emails and when, to con­tent such as text, audio and video, the Post report­ed.

The NSA and its British coun­ter­part, the U.K. Gov­ern­ment Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Head­quar­ters, have inter­cept­ed and tapped into data fun­neled by Google and Yahoo through fiber optic cables, rout­ing infor­ma­tion in an NSA oper­a­tion called Mus­cu­lar, the Post report­ed. The infor­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed to the news­pa­per by for­mer NSA con­tract employ­ee Edward Snow­den, who is being sought by the U.S. for leak­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion.

“Had the NSA done the same war­rant­less tap­ping at Google’s Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia, head­quar­ters, there’s no doubt they would be vio­lat­ing the law,” said Cohn, whose San Fran­cis­co-based non-prof­it fights for dig­i­tal free­doms. “They’re doing this abroad because they want that fig leaf of legal­i­ty.”

The NSA, in an online state­ment, says its col­lec­tion oper­a­tions com­ply with fed­er­al laws and orders.

Reagan’s 1981 Exec­u­tive Order 12333 for the first time in a pub­lic, writ­ten record allowed for­eign covert action to be con­duct­ed from inside the U.S. The mea­sure, amend­ed sev­er­al times after 9/11, out­lines key rules for more than a dozen intel­li­gence agen­cies. It spells out when spies are allowed to peek into mail, homes and elec­tron­ics, iden­ti­fies who has to approve of spe­cif­ic search­es, and details how to car­ry out clan­des­tine col­lec­tion of for­eign intel­li­gence.

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Ahhh...good ol’ Exec­u­tive Order 12333.