The New York Times has an article based on information from former intelligence staff which supports the contention that the NSA is broadly accessing the actual content of emails sent by US citizens.
N.S.A. Sifting Broader Set of Data Crossing U.S. Border
The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.
The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.
While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations.
This information is sharply at variance with the position taken in this statement.
At a House Intelligence Committee oversight hearing in June, for example, a lawmaker pressed the deputy director of the N.S.A., John Inglis, to say whether the agency listened to the phone calls or read the e-mails and text messages of American citizens. Mr. Inglis replied, “We do not target the content of U.S. person communications without a specific warrant anywhere on the earth.”
The NYT contacted NSA for comments on this story and got a rather evasive response. It is their contention that whatever it is that they are doing is entirely legal under the provisions of the 2008 FISA amendments. The problem with that claim is that any review of the program by the FISA court has been conducted in secret.