Also worth noting that “foreign communications” are any communications that have even a tentative connection to any communication that travels outside of the domestic US.

That includes multiple layers: if you live in the US and have never left it or even communicated outside of it somehow but have emailed your friend who lives next door and who happens to have a penpal in Canada then all of your friend’s communications and all of yours can be classified as “foreign communications” and be subject to NSA collection/spying.

Simply because you have a provable connection to your friend and they have communications outside of the US.

Your communications can also be considered “foreign” if you use or interact with an email server hosted outside the US.

In other words basically all of our communications domestic and foreign are hoovered up by these agencies because of loopholes and they probably still will be even if it becomes “illegal”