NSA feeds raw intelligence data to Israel

Avraham Shalom, Ami Ayalon, Yaakov Peri, Yuval Diskin,
Avi Dichter and Carmi Gillon (Sony/Allstar Picture Library)
A secret memo provided by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden to the British Guardian newspaper reveals that the US spy agency is funneling raw intelligence data, including information from intercepted communications of US citizens, to Israeli intelligence.
“The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens,” the Guardian article by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill reports.
The undated five-page memo records an agreement reached between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, the ISNU (Israeli Sigint National Unit), in March 2009, during the first months of the Obama administration.
Entitled “Protection of US Persons,” it purports to lay out a protocol for the Israeli spy agency’s handling of “signals intelligence information that has not been reviewed for foreign intelligence purposes or minimized,” i.e., raw intercepts provided without any filtering by the NSA itself. “Minimization” refers to an ostensible policy of determining whether phone calls, emails and other communications intercepted from American citizens are “essential to assess or understand the significance of the foreign intelligence.”
The memo states that the terms of the agreement are designed to ensure that the handling of such material by Israeli intelligence is “consistent with the requirements upon NSA by US law and Executive Order to establish safeguards protecting the rights of US persons under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.”
The Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” barring searches without narrowly defined warrants based on probable cause. It has been ripped to shreds by the NSA’s domestic spying operations, which amount to the wholesale seizure of personal records from virtually every American citizen and millions of people abroad, with no specific warrants whatsoever.
While insisting that the Israelis operate with deference to the US Constitution and law, the memo adds, “This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law.” In other words, in practice ISNU and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad are free to do as they please.