Legal loopholes could allow wider NSA surveillance, researchers say

Secret loopholes exist that could allow the National Security Agency to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to conduct massive domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens, according to leading academics.

The research paper released Monday by researchers at Harvard and Boston University details how the U.S. government could "conduct largely unrestrained surveillance on Americans by collecting their network traffic abroad," despite constitutional protections against warrantless searches.

One of the paper's authors, Axel Arnbak of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told CBS News that U.S. surveillance laws presume Internet traffic is non-American when it is collected from overseas.

"The loopholes in current surveillance laws and today's Internet technology may leave American communications as vulnerable to surveillance, and as unprotected as the internet traffic of foreigners," Arnbak said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/legal-loopholes-could-let-nsa-surveillance-circumvent-fourth-amendment-researchers-say/