It doesn't make sense that the NSA reports on crime and yet there are high profile targets that use the internet and avoid arrest for years or indefinitely. I personally doubt Snowden if he truly claims that the NSA reports on all illegal activity that they intercept. It sounds like bullshit to me, for a variety of reasons. Without documented proof that they are compelled to report on criminal activity, I am completely unconvinced. From The Guardian : Note that it says the NSA analysts may *appeal* to the NSA director to keep intercepted US internal communications that are *inadvertently* intercepted. It doesn't say that the NSA is compelled to report criminal activity to the police. It doesn't say that NSA analysts are compelled to report criminal activity to the NSA director. It says that they *can appeal* to keep the communications. I also note that they mention evidence of a crime and also information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property. In general, anything they intercept that pertains to a threat of serious harm to life or property is evidence of a crime, and I imagine in the likely extremely rare cases that they exercise their ability to utilize US internal intercepts, that it will be in cases of domestic terrorism and similar things. I think people are taking this way out of proportion in assuming that the NSA is systematically sucking up US internal communications and then piping them off to the FBI for criminal investigations. That is not what the NSA does. Furthermore, traffic metadata intercept of US internal communications has *always* been legal without a warrant. Even the FBI and the local police do not need warrants to intercept traffic metadata. The courts have never considered traffic metadata to be protected by the constitution, only payload data. The only difference between what the NSA is doing and what the FBI and local police are probably doing, is that the NSA is gathering *all* of the traffic metadata whereas the police only gather metadata when they think it will assist them in their current investigation.