US Spy Agencies are Pushed to Reveal Extent of US Surveillance
May 7, 10:21 PM EDT
SPY AGENCIES ARE PUSHED TO REVEAL EXTENT OF US
SURVEILLANCE
BY DEB RIECHMANN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even though the bulk collection of
Americans' telephone records has ended, calls and emails are still being swept
up by U.S. surveillance work targeting foreigners. Congress is making a renewed
push to find out how many.
Six Republicans and eight Democrats on the House
Judiciary Committee have asked the nation's top intelligence official for the
number of Americans' emails and phone calls collected under programs authorized
by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The programs target foreigners, but domestic
communications sometimes are vacuumed up as well. They were first revealed to
the public by Edward Snowden, who leaked files from the National Security
Agency.
"Surely the American public is entitled to some idea
of how many of our communications are swept up by these programs," the
committee members wrote in their April 22 letter to Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper.
They weren't the first to request the information.
In the past five years, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of
Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico have asked repeatedly. Last October, a
coalition of more than 30 civil liberties groups wrote Clapper seeking the
information. Unsatisfied with the answer they received, they wrote him again in
January.
Intelligence officials have tried to assuage concerns of
Congress and others by saying that any domestic communications collected are
"incidental" to the targeting of foreigners. They say Section 702
allows the government to target only non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be
located outside the United States. They say the law explicitly bars the
government from targeting a foreigner to acquire the communications of an
American or someone in the U.S. But they say intelligence agencies are authorized
under Section 702 to query communications made with U.S. persons under certain
cases with certain approvals.
Late last month, Clapper said intelligence agencies are
looking into several options for providing an estimate and will do their best
to come up with a number.
"This tool is a terrific producer of critical
intelligence for this country and our allies," Clapper said recently about
continued need for Section 702 programs.
He did not say how soon an estimate could be released and
cautioned that "any methodology we come up with will not be completely
satisfactory to all parties."
Even Congress acknowledges that producing an estimate
could require reviewing actual emails, for instance, acquired under Section
702, which itself could raise privacy concerns. But lawmakers say they are only
advocating a "one-time, limited sampling" of communications.
Intelligence officials held briefings last week for
congressional aides to explain ways an estimate could be provided. That is
something Congress wants to get before it starts debating whether to
reauthorize Section 702, which is set to expire at the end of next year. The
Senate Judiciary Committee plans a hearing Tuesday on the issue.
Intelligence officials also briefed privacy advocates in
March and are expected to hold another this month on the best way to estimate
the extent to which domestic communications are ensnared in the quest for
foreign intelligence. Among the problems is determining the citizenship of a
caller or emailer, or whether the person is inside or outside the United
States.
"We can't go into what I hope will be an extensive
public debate without this basic information," said Elizabeth Goitein,
co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice's program on liberty and national
security.
In a recent article, Goitein wrote: "The National
Security Agency acquires more than 250 million Internet communications each
year under this program. Given the ubiquity of international communication,
this number is virtually certain to include tens of millions of exchanges that
involve Americans, but there is no official public data on how many Americans'
communications are swept up."
Congress and privacy advocates got a glimpse into Section
702 surveillance from a congressionally mandated report that Clapper's office
released this past week. The report said Section 702 surveillance targeted
94,368 foreign persons, groups or entities outside the U.S. last year, up
slightly from 92,707 in 2014.
While the year-to-year increase is small, Jameel Jaffer,
deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, notes that the
number of targets has risen to more than 94,000 since the surveillance became
legal in 2008.
The report also said that 23,800 queries concerning U.S.
persons were conducted on the database, although the report notes that one of
the intelligence agencies involved in the queries, which was not identified,
did not provide this information.
The report also said 4,672 search terms concerning U.S.
persons were used to retrieve information from Section 702 data, but privacy
experts point out that the number excludes queries conducted by the FBI.
"It's true that the targets are foreigners, but in
the course of targeting those 94,000 people, the government collects the
communications of many, many - we don't know the number - Americans,"
Jaffer said. "That number is missing."
Intelligence report: http://tinyurl.com/gq7ksq2
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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