"Previously, with narrow exceptions, an intelligence agency was permitted to disseminate information gathered from court-approved wiretaps only after deleting irrelevant private details and masking the names of innocent Americans who came into contact with a
“Previously, with narrow exceptions, an intelligence agency was permitted to disseminate information gathered from court-approved wiretaps only after deleting irrelevant private details and masking the names of innocent Americans who came into contact with a terrorism suspect. The Raw Take order significantly changed that system, documents show, allowing counterterrorism analysts at the N.S.A., the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to share unfiltered personal information.”
See the full article: How a Court Secretly Evolved, Extending U.S. Spies’ Reach (New York Times, link)
Background documents: • Stellarwind (pdf) • NSA-FISA: Classifications Guide (pdf) • NSA/CSS: Classification Guide (pdf)