Mark Jaycox has written a long article on the US Executive Order 12333: “No Oversight, No Limits, No Worries: A Primer on Presidential Spying and Executive Order 12,333“:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3486701

Abstract: Executive Order 12,333 (“EO 12333”) is a 1980s Executive Order signed by President Ronald Reagan that, among other things, establishes an overarching policy framework for the Executive Branch’s spying powers. Although electronic surveillance programs authorized by EO 12333 generally target foreign intelligence from foreign targets, its permissive targeting standards allow for the substantial collection of Americans’ communications containing little to no foreign intelligence value. This fact alone necessitates closer inspection.

This working draft conducts such an inspection by collecting and coalescing the various declassifications, disclosures, legislative investigations, and news reports concerning EO 12333 electronic surveillance programs in order to provide a better understanding of how the Executive Branch implements the order and the surveillance programs it authorizes. The Article pays particular attention to EO 12333’s designation of the National Security Agency as primarily responsible for conducting signals intelligence, which includes the installation of malware, the analysis of internet traffic traversing the telecommunications backbone, the hacking of U.S.-based companies like Yahoo and Google, and the analysis of Americans’ communications, contact lists, text messages, geolocation data, and other information.

After exploring the electronic surveillance programs authorized by EO 12333, this Article proposes reforms to the existing policy framework, including narrowing the aperture of authorized surveillance, increasing privacy standards for the retention of data, and requiring greater transparency and accountability.

Jones • September 28, 2020 8:04 AM

There’s a great New York Times article on the NSA from 1983 that details how the agency was created by executive order and how Congress has never passed any law limiting its power or clarifying its scope:

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html

There’s another report by the Brennan Center called “What Went Wrong With the FISA Court?” that details the creation of FISA after the Church Committee hearings, and how post-911, FISA has been amended to require the types of activities that FISA was created to prevent:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-went-wrong-fisa-court

Both documents are important for understanding what EO 12333 means in practice today.

Cody • September 28, 2020 10:00 AM

Reagan’s EO 12333 replaced Gerald Ford’s EO 11905.
Ford’s 1976 EO was a reluctant response to the shocking revelations of the 1975 Senate ‘Church Committee’, which uncovered widespread illegal domestic spying activity (& illicit forein interventions) by Federal agencies including USArmy, IRS, CIA, NSA. Most of the Church findings were kept classified from the American public.

Church did make public the discovery of “Operation SHAMROCK”, in which the major US telecommunications companies shared all their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s.