Comment by dragonwriter

> The government takes the position that their agents are almost completely unconstrained by law when it comes to actions taken abroad aimed at non-US persons.

More to the point of the article here, the government takes the position that their agents are completely unconstrianed by law when it comes to using information shared by foreign intelligence services that their agents had no part in collecting, and the collection here is done by the GCHQ -- a British intelligence agency -- who simply provides NSA the privilege of submitting search terms and getting matching data from the collection GCHQ does from their taps.