Is This How The NSA Is Spying On Tucker Carlson?

Surveillance without Borders: The “Traffic Shaping” Loophole and Why It Matters

tcf.org/content/report/surveillance-without-borders-the-traffic-shaping-loophole-and-why-it-matters/?agreed=1

This report describes a novel and more disturbing set of risks. As a technical matter, the NSA does not have to wait for domestic communications to naturally turn up abroad. In fact, the agency has technical methods that can be used to deliberately reroute Internet communications. The NSA uses the term “traffic shaping” to describe any technical means the deliberately reroutes Internet traffic to a location that is better suited, operationally, to surveillance. Since it is hard to intercept Yemen’s international communications from inside Yemen itself, the agency might try to “shape” the traffic so that it passes through communications cables located on friendlier territory.10 Think of it as diverting part of a river to a location from which it is easier (or more legal) to catch fish.


Could the NSA use traffic shaping to redirect domestic Internet traffic—emails and chat messages sent between Americans, say—to foreign soil, where its surveillance can be conducted beyond the purview of Congress11 and the courts?