Stellar Wind: CIA analysts didn’t use the NSA’s Spy program.

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A newly-released document from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) own internal watchdog found that the government’s controversial warrantless surveillance and bulk data collection program was so secretive that the agency was unable to make “full use” of its capabilities even several years after the September 11 attacks. Initially, only top-level CIA officials were cleared on its use, rather than rank-and-file "CIA analysts and targeting officers.”

STELLAR WIND, the code name for the highly secretive President’s Surveillance Program (PSP, or “The Program”), was created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The legal justification for the PSP has changed multiple times over the years, and today it stands under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FISA AA) of 2008, which remains law.

The CIA IG report writes that under the PSP, there were three "sets of data" collected.
The first set included the content of individually targeted telephone and e-mail communications. The second consisted of telephone dialing information—the date, time, and duration of calls; the telephone number of the caller; and the number receiving the call—collected in bulk. The third data set consisted of e-mail transactional data collected in bulk.

Several factors hindered the CIA in making full use of the capabilities of the PSP. Many CIA officers told us that too few CIA personnel at the working level were read into the PSP. Officials told us that CIA and targeting officers who were read in had too many competing priorities and too many other available information sources and analytic tools, many of which were more easily accessed and timely, to fully utilize the PSP. 
CIA officers also told us that the PSP would have been more fully utilized if and targeting officers had obtained a better understanding of the program's capabilities. Many CIA officers noted that there was insufficient training and legal guidance concerning the program's capabilities and the use of PSP-derived information. 
Ars Technica: http://bit.ly/1dzO2Z1

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