Ever persistent, Wyden has returned with another set of questions [PDF] regarding NSA surveillance. This one pertains to the least-discussed surveillance authorization and the one almost everyone — including members of oversight committees — knows nearly nothing about: Executive Order 12333.

Like Section 702, there‘s a good probability intelligence gathered under this authority is being used by domestic agencies. Backdoor searches of NSA intel have been unofficial common knowledge for years now, so there‘s very little reason to believe the NSA‘s most mysterious authority doesn‘t have its own built-in peepholes for the FBI and other federal agencies.

Way back on December 4, 1981 before the internet, smart phones and smart televisions were even thought of and when computers took up entire rooms and telephones were attached to walls with cords, then President Ronald Reagan signed an Executive Order that would change the face of spying by the United States and its massive intelligence network. The Executive Order, entitled “United States Intelligence Activities“, also known as Executive Order 12333, laid out the goals, directions, duties and responsibilities of the American global intelligence effort. While the U.S. intelligence community had the right to conduct surveillance prior to EO 12333, the community’s original mandate was considerably extended and detailed under EO 12333.

(17.1.2017) Die Anordnung 12333 besagt, dass die NSA Telefon- und E-Mail- Kommunikation von Nicht-US-Bürgern ohne richterlichen Beschluss eingesehen werden dürfen. Zudem erlaube sie das „unabsichtliche“ Sammeln von Daten von US-Bürgern.

(13.3.2017) Another less common legal proceeding, known as 12333, or “twelve triple-three,” manages U.S. intelligence-gathering offshore. It authorizes the attorney general to permit searches „of communications to or from an American for the purposes of targeting that American – again, as long as the attorney general determines that person is an agent of a foreign power,“ according to The Hill.

Further, the National Security Agency can upload that intercepted intelligence to an online repository through which other intel agencies can search.

Another, less well-understood surveillance authority comes from a Reagan-era executive order known as 12333, or “twelve triple-three.”

EO 12333 — much of which is redacted — governs U.S. intelligence gathering overseas. It has come under fire from civil liberties advocates, who say it gives the intelligence community a blank check to regulate its own spying.

(30.1.2017) So it is ironic that, with one of his final acts as President, Obama completed the process of normalizing and expanding Stellar Wind with the expansion of EO 12333 information sharing.

As I laid out some weeks ago, on January 3, Loretta Lynch signed procedures that permit the NSA to share its data with any of America’s other 16 intelligence agencies. This gives CIA direct access to NSA data, including on Americans. It gives all agencies who jump through some hoops that ability to access US person metadata available overseas for the kind of analysis allegedly shut down under USA Freedom Act, with far fewer limits in place than existed under the old Section 215 dragnet exposed by Edward Snowden.

And it did so just as an obvious authoritarian took over the White House.

(12.1.2017) Die öffentlich gemachte Anordnung passt das berüchtigte präsidiale Dekret 12333 aus der Amtszeit Ronald Reagans an…

(10.9.2014) Am 29. August 2014 veröffentlichten, angeführt von der „American Civil Liberties Union“ und der „Electronic Frontier Foundation“, über 40 Organisationen, 4 Kongressabgeordnete, sowie ehemalige Regierungsbeamte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika über accessnow.org einen offenen Brief an ihren amtierenden Präsidenten Barack Obama:

„Wir rufen den Präsidenten dazu auf, alle gegenwärtigen und zukünftigen Rechtsmeinungen („legal opinion“) oder Interpretationen betreffend der Überwachung unter Executive Order 12333 und den darunter erlassenen überwachungsbezogenen Regulatorien zu deklassifizieren (Anm: die Geheimhaltung aufzuheben) und öffentlich zu machen. Geheimes Gesetz ist eine Bedrohung für die Demokratie.

Wir fordern sowohl den Präsidenten, als auch das Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board dazu auf, eine untersuchende Prüfung der Überwachung unter E.O. 12333 durchzuführen, auf der Deklassifizierung von Information zu bestehen die der Öffentlichkeit helfen würde das Wesen und das Ausmaß dieser Überwachung zu verstehen, und so schnell wie möglich Mechanismen und spezifische Schritte vorzuschlagen um oben gemachte Empfehlungen umzusetzen.“

Rund 32 Jahre nach ihrem Erlass am 4. Dezember 1981 war in den USA Executive Order 12333 als eine zentrale Ermächtigung der US-Regierung bei ihrer willkürlichen Massenspionage von Geheimdiensten und assoziierten Konsortien gegen die eigene Bevölkerung („Totalüberwachung“) begriffen worden.

(5. November 2013)

The New York Times reported this morning that the Obama administration has put into place new rules allowing the NSA to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information.” According to a 23-page, mostly declassified copy of the procedures, released today, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper signed the rules on Dec. 15 and Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed them on Jan. 3.

The changes have been a long time coming. On February 25, 2016, Charlie Savage reported for the Times that the Obama administration would soon be implementing a new system, years in the making, to provide more intelligence agencies across the federal government direct access to raw information collected by the NSA.

The effort to update the 1982 DoD manual’s procedures was an interagency process, Mahar explained.

“We went line by line, procedure by procedure,” he said, working with senior representatives of all defense intelligence components as the updated guidelines were finalized.

DoD officials included representatives from the military services, the Joint Staff and several defense and combat support agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, and the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency.

“We worked closely with the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence because EO 12333 requires approval by the attorney general after consultation with the DNI,” he said, noting that the process was a good example of interagency collaboration.

“We took a very complex set of procedures and effectively updated them to deal with current and near-future operating practices and capabilities,” he said

Late last night, the NY Times broke a very troubling story. Rather than finally putting an end to Executive Order 12333, it appears that President Obama is going to expand the power of it in dangerous ways. We‘ve written about EO 12333 a bunch of times, but for those of you unfamiliar with it, it‘s an executive order signed by President Reagan that basically gave the NSA pretty free rein to collect signals intelligence outside of the US. Because it‘s not (technically) about domestic surveillance, what the NSA does under EO 12333 is not subject to Congressional oversight. That is, Congress is mostly as much in the dark as everyone else is on what the NSA is doing overseas. And, as former State Department official John Napier Tye revealed a couple of years ago, for all the talk of domestic surveillance programs revealed by Ed Snowden, the NSA‘s real power comes almost entirely from 12333.