New research paper on how the NSA can evade legal prohibitions against collecting Internet data and metadata on Americans by forcing domestic traffic to leave and return to the US. The general technique is called "traffic shaping," and has legitimate uses in network management.
From a news article: The Obama administration previously said there had been Congressional and Judicial oversight of these surveillance laws -- notably Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorized the collection of Americans' phone records; and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorized the controversial PRISM program to access non-U.S. residents' emails, social networking, and cloud-stored data.

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