N.S.A. Said to Have Paid E-Mail Providers Millions to Cover Costs From Court Ruling

The National Security Agency apparently compensated e-mail service providers “millions of dollars” for costs they incurred in the fallout from an October 2011 court ruling that an unrelated aspect of the agency’s surveillance operations violated the Constitution, according to a newly disclosed document.

The document — a brief article in a secret internal agency newsletter, dated October 2012, that was leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and published by The Guardian on Friday — added a detail to the emerging public understanding of the once-secret episode, but it also raised new questions.

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The procedures involve how the agency carries out eavesdropping operations without warrants on domestic soil, but aimed at foreigners abroad, under a 2008 law called the FISA Amendments Act. The effort has two parts: one called Prism, which the N.S.A. uses to collect messages from e-mail providers like Google, and an “upstream” collection from networks operated by companies like Verizon. The entire effort collects about 250 million communications a year, the 2011 court ruling said.

The successful recertification contrasted with the one in October 2011, the newsletter said, when Judge John D. Bates of the surveillance court ruled that the N.S.A.’s upstream operations, which were also collecting tens of thousands of purely domestic e-mails for a technical reason, violated the Constitution. As a result, the N.S.A. had worked out new procedures for handling such messages, resulting in months of delays.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/nsa-said-to-have-paid-e-mail-providers-millions-to-cover-costs-from-court-ruling.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0