[pdkl95]

I find it very interesting that Snowden explicitly confirmed that when the NSA says they only capture "foreign" data, they are considering the endpoints of the wires that transport any given packet, not the humans that generate/receive that packets.

The NSA has a lot of people focused on "metadata" of the endpoints only, and not the entire path the data actually follows that is generally not something the leaves of the network can control. Snowden mentioned moving data to different locations (probably remote mirrors/backups) as one of the places data is captured. The NSA can probably capture any data they want by simply poisoning a few BGP[1] routes so the data they want is routed internationally.

[1] pick your favorite method of rerouting traffic; BGP is just one obvious example

[LLWM]

I don't think anyone is surprised at this point that they interpret their mission as broadly as they can possibly justify. The NSA are singlehandedly tearing down the stereotypes of lazy government workers.