The New York Times has recently published an article revealing that former US President Bill Clinton's email has inadvertently been included in an extensive catalog of millions of captured local and foreign emails collected by NSA (National Security Agency) surveillance. The newspaper reports that, an NSA intelligence operative was allegedly being investigated after retrieving Clinton's private correspondence in the aforesaid database. There was no further information in regards to how many of Clinton's email messages were intercepted or when the capture happened.

Codenamed Pinwale, the database enables NSA researchers and analysts to sift through and investigate large volumes of email correspondences, which includes messages to and from US citizens. In theory, Pinwale could very well be the final destination of all data procured from Internet backdoors into AT&T facilities and NSA-run surveillance rooms found across the nation.

These cyber spying rooms were established by the Bush administration right after the September 11 bombing of the World Trade Center, and they were ultimately made legal in 2008 after the FISA Amendments Act was passed by Congress. The new act enables telecoms immunity for helping the government run covert, 9/11-related intelligence work. It also provides a method by which the NSA can lawfully spy on an immense number of email addresses and telephone numbers in bulk instead of needing to apply for a warrant for each respective target.

In effect, the NSA can amass the messages of millions of Americans with a single court order or without one granted that the interception happens accidentally while the agency is pinpointing suspected individuals "reasonably believed" to be in foreign soil. However, the Times reported that as early as 2005, the agency customarily inspected immense amounts of US email correspondences without any court warrants via this legal loophole. The publication further alleges that the NSA is still inadvertently practicing warrant-less over-gathering of email because of problems in distinguishing and filtering between domestic and foreign messages.

According to the paper, if a US message or correspondence appears in search results as researchers sieve and sort through the extensive database, they are given legal permission to read it provided that such messages account for no more than 30% of a given search result. In any case, the NSA maintains that the excessive collection of messages was an accidental and unavoidable consequence, and such incidents were corrected each time they appeared.

Then again, the chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel—Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey—disputes such claims. Holt and his fellow congressmen have held closed-door meetings concerning the issue, even though the investigation remains ongoing and there are still no plans to hold a hearing on the issue.