No.
Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cell phone conversations?
No.
It's worth noting that "intercept" has a very specific meaning here, which the Congressman asking the question nor the reporter may not have realized.
From http://theweek.com/article/index/245228/the-fbi-collects-all...
A few definitions: to "collect" means to gather and store; to "analyze" means that a computer or human actually does something with the records; to "intercept" means that a computer or human actually listens to or records calls.
So it is possible that the NSA routinely collects telephone and/or email metadata and that the NSA does not routinely "intercept" citizen's email or cell-phone conversation (depending upon the meaning of "routinely" used), and that an answer of "No" to the latter is not a lie.
This article by the same author has more information on the program's specifics (http://theweek.com/article/index/245285/how-the-nsa-uses-you...), as his sources have told him:
The NSA would insist that it does not actually "spy" on you until it gets a further order, if at all. In most all circumstances, the FBI, not the NSA, would actually listen to your conversations if a FISA order was acquired. So merely "collecting" the data is like receiving a box full of records but not opening it until and unless they had a good reason to do so.
That metaphor is not terribly comforting, but it does appear to be the government's justification for insisting that they don't actually, actively "spy" on you. It is true: If they only compile these transactional records and don't do anything with them, and they faithfully honor this distinction, then the scale of the actual surveillance is not necessarily harmful, although it feels heavy. That's a big if. It depends on whether you believe the NSA follows the rules.
In other words, they collude to keep the public in the dark.
Have you heard the claim that your name in all caps is different than your name as you would write it? What is your opinion on that claim?
That won't stop Congress from being livid, should the representatives choose to be.
Lookup: "William Binney" former NSA official. he says the NSA intercepts most American email communications.
Having a permanent digital record of what many assume to be transient information is what makes this alarming beyond belief.
"Obama administration spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen"
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-admin-spied-fox-new...
These creative redefinitions of seemingly benign terms are at the root of the problem.
- "Verizon intercepts the calls, we only collect them"
- "Verison only gives us call meta data (who called whom? when? how long?)."
- "We don't intercept the emails, Google just gives us all of the emails sitting on their servers."
... etc
"we don't - our interception devices do"
:(
Interesting. Along those lines then if you were to make a clone of someone's hard drive but you actually didn't boot or access any of the information on the hard drive I wonder what law that may or may not break? You seem to be guilty of cloning a hard drive which may not be the same as stealing anything in particular that is covered by the way a law is written.
Language matters.
Also the questions focus on what the NSA is intercepting, not what they are being given /demanding under a NSL.
Also it's unclear what processing by computers may be done of such material. If you have a computer doing threat assessment of all emails, but the NSA employees only get the assessment results, not the text, they could arguably state what they are saying.
Wrong questions. Someone should clue congress into the right questions.
see: "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is."
In other words, if we find out this guy is lying through his teeth, he's toast no matter what the rules said he "could" say.
Most of us might hate that the government has this power but that does not make it extra-legal.
