5 Fun Facts From the Latest NSA Leak

After a brief respite, the Guardian newspaper has resumed its publication of leaked NSA documents. The latest round provides a look at the secret rules the government follows for collecting data on U.S. persons.

We found a number of interesting disclosures in two documents released by the newspaper. Among them:

1) The NSA generally destroys communication of U.S. persons that are collected incidental to collecting data on foreign individuals — unless the communication is encrypted, which means that encrypted email and text communications involving U.S. persons that are collected by the NSA in the course of conducting bulk collections would be retained by the agency. It does this as a matter of course, the document appears to say, to further its research and assessment into cracking encryption. The NSA may retain the encrypted communications for “any period of time” during which it might prove to be useful.