NSA 60 minutes

CBS 60 Minutes and the NSA link

Ok so there was a lot WRONG with the piece here, and it was easily criticized by everyone except obvious NSA defenders, but my key question was related to the metadata collection of the "pirates".

Metadata has become one of the most important tools in the NSA’s arsenal. Metadata is the digital information on the number dialed, the time and date, and the frequency of the calls.  We wanted to see how metadata was used at the NSA.  Analyst Stephen Benitez showed us a technique known as “call chaining” used to develop targets for electronic surveillance in a pirate network based in Somalia.

Stephen Benitez: As you see here, I'm only allowed to chain on anything that I've been trained on and that I have access to. Add our known pirate. And we chain him out. 

John Miller: Chain him out, for the audience, means what?

Stephen Benitez: People he's been in contact to for those 18 days.

Stephen Benitez: One that stands out to me first would be this one here. He's communicated with our target 12 times.

Stephen Benitez: Now we’re looking at Target B’s contacts.

John Miller: So he's talking to three or four known pirates?

Stephen Benitez: Correct. These three here. We have direct connection to both Target A and Target B. So we'll look at him, too, we'll chain him out. And you see, he's in communication with lots of known pirates. He might be the missing link that tells us everything.

John Miller: What happens in this space when a number comes up that's in Dallas?

Stephen Benitez: So If it does come up, normally, you'll see it as a protected number-- and if you don't have access to it, you won't be able to look.

If a terrorist is suspected of having contacts inside the United States, the NSA can query a database that contains the metadata of every phone call made in the U.S. going back five years.

THIS is how most of the articles and commentary are described----metadata, collection, surveillance etc, but from what I know about the NSA and Snowden revelations, there are the rules that they follow and what they are legally allowed to collect, link NSA is legally allowed to collect emails from Pakistan for example, so my question when I saw things like this tweet criticizing NSA for showing EO 12333 searches versus 215, I got confused, asking "why are they only collecting foreign metadata?? arent they legally allowed to collect content?? and what laws (215, 702, EO 12333) SHOULD they be using, and what does each law legally allow, besides the "secret law" interpretation that Snowden and others are upset about?

I really would appreciate an answer, for me and everyone else confused by this.