US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency's top lawyer insists

> Neither De nor any other US official discussed data taken from the internet under different legal authorities. Different documents Snowden disclosed, published by the Washington Post, indicated that NSA takes data as it transits between Yahoo and Google data centers, an activity reportedly conducted not under Section 702 but under a seminal executive order known as 12333.

So the companies knew that they were receiving secret court orders to disclose data. Well, duh.

Edit: he even says so explicitly:

> “All 702 collection is pursuant to court directives, so they have to know,” De reiterated to the Guardian.

Thanks for saving that for the last line. All the rest is just trying to connect dots they have no new evidence for.

Earlier, the government insisted that simply collecting information in their databases was not a 4th ammendment violation, because the actual 'search' only occured when they _search_ the database, not when they collect and put in their database.

(I think maybe they even defined 'collect' so it somehow only applied when they did a search, not when they actually collected?)

Now they:

> ...strongly rejected suggestions by the panel that a court authorise searches for Americans’ information inside the 702 databases. “If you have to go back to court every time you look at the information in your custody, you can imagine that would be quite burdensome,” deputy assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told the board.

> De argued that once the Fisa court permits the collection annually, analysts ought to be free to comb through it, and stated that there were sufficient privacy safeguards for Americans after collection and querying had occurred. “That information is at the government’s disposal to review in the first instance,” De said.

Combine them both, and, well, you see where you get.