The US National Security Agency ( NSA ) has the legal authority to spy on almost every foreign country in the world, except for its four closest allies, according to a top-secret FISA document
The document, leaked by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden and published by the Washington Post after a four-month investigation into NSA data, shows that the agency is using Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Actto authorize its PRISM spy program to collect data on users of US companies such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
According to the newspaper, nine out of ten digital account holders "are not designated targets but are caught in the net" of the service.
The news is no longer a surprise. There has never been any doubt that the NSA is an agency dedicated to gathering intelligence from all over the world. Nor that it looks like much: According to information coming from Edward Snowden, the NSA has the green light to spy on 193 countries. But FISA explicitly prohibits spying on the four “Five Eyes” allies as well as “foreign nation factions” such as Palestine, Turkish Cyprus, and major international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
The “Five Eyes” partnership was established after the end of World War II. Under the protocol, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed to exchange information and not spy on each other.
