NSA collected Americans' phone records despite law change - report

[webfact]

NSA collected Americans' phone records despite law change - report

By Mark Hosenball

REUTERS

 

      

An illustration picture shows the logo of the U.S. National Security Agency on the display of an iPhone in Berlin, June 7, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer.

 

The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people U.S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism.

 

It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year.

 

The NSA has been gathering a vast quantity of telephone "metadata," records of callers' and recipients' phone numbers and the times and durations of the calls - but not their content - since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

 

The report came as Congress faced a decision on whether to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which permits the NSA to collect foreign intelligence information on non-U.S. persons outside the United States, and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

 

Privacy advocates have argued that Section 702 permits the NSA to spy on Internet and telephone communications of Americans without warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and that foreign intelligence could be used for domestic law enforcement purposes in a way that evades traditional legal requirements.

 

The report said that on one occasion in 2016, the FBI obtained information about an American in response to a search of Section 702 data intended to produce evidence of a crime not related to foreign intelligence.

 

The report did not address how frequently the FBI obtained information about Americans while investigating a foreign intelligence matter, however.

 

On Friday, the NSA said it had stopped a form of surveillance that allowed it to collect the digital communications of Americans who mentioned a foreign intelligence target in their messages without a warrant.

 

TRUMP'S ALLEGATIONS

 

The new report also came amid allegations, recently repeated by U.S. President Donald Trump, that former President Barack Obama ordered warrantless surveillance of his communications and that former national security adviser Susan Rice asked the NSA to unmask the names of U.S. persons caught in the surveillance.

 

Both Republican and Democratic members of the congressional intelligence committees have said that so far they have found no evidence to support either allegation.

 

Officials on Tuesday argued that the 151 million records collected last year were tiny compared with the number collected under procedures that were stopped after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the surveillance program in 2013.

 

Because the 151 million would include multiple calls made to or from the same phone numbers, the number of people whose records were collected also would be much smaller, the officials said. They said they had no breakdown of how many individuals' phone records were among those collected.

 

In all, according to the report, U.S. officials unmasked the names of fewer Americans in NSA eavesdropping reports in 2016 than they did the previous year, the top U.S. intelligence officer reported on Tuesday.

 

The report said the names of 1,934 "U.S. persons" were "unmasked" last year in response to specific requests, compared with 2,232 in 2015, but it did not identify who requested the names or on what grounds.

 

Officials said in the report that U.S. intelligence agencies had gone out of their way to make public more information about U.S. electronic eavesdropping.

 

"This year's report continues our trajectory toward greater transparency, providing additional statistics beyond what is required by law," said Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokesman Timothy Barrett.

 

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-05-03

[humqdpf]

We just don't get the message, do we?

 

If I break the law, even as part of an organisation, even if I am ordered to by a superior, I go to jail.

 

If you break the law, even as part of an organisation, even if you were ordered to break the law by a superior, you go to jail

 

But if the NSA breaks the law, no one goes to jail. Get it yet?

[Andaman Al]

The fact of reality we must face is that the reason the intelligence agencies have so much "intelligence" is that they do not play by the rules and that will NEVER change. The only way you can protect yourself from unwanted illegal surveillance is for you to take responsibility for the way in which you communicate. If you wish to make it difficult for people to snoop in on you there is a massive amount of information on the web on how to do that, but people are lazy.

 

A friend of mine is a technical guy at GCHQ and he said to me that if you operate a computer without a firewall he can be inside every part of your system in seconds wherever you are in the world. How many people operate without their firewall activated? How many people make it easy to compromise passwords? Do you know that the vast majority of people in the world use only a maximum of 3 passwords and rarely change them.

 

If I put up a website with appealing information and I just want you to register before you get the info the chances are you will enter your main email address and use the password (for registration) that you actually use in your main email or Facebook accounts. Boom! Hacking not required, you voluntarily gave away your key, sensitive information. Chances are you will not change your password so I can monitor your entire communications for months on end and you would never know. How many of you on here use the same password for logging on as you do for your main communications accounts? The NSA and the likes do not need to be sneaky and illegal when we are often so dull that we give people free access to our most sensitive info. Think about it!

[sanukjim]

No Shxt Sherlock.They have to flaunt the law in order to stay ahead of the bad guys and terrorist.

[Dumbastheycome]

That is the reality of the false face of  democracy in a militarized union of Police  States.

Liberty....with  shackles.

[redbarron]

Dumbastheycome, America is NOT a democracy. It is a democratic republic. Big difference.

[Dumbastheycome]

13 hours ago, redbarron said:

Dumbastheycome, America is NOT a democracy. It is a democratic republic. Big difference.

Re'  public. Constitutionally  bent as  the  average  banana.

 

[Dumbastheycome]

For the  record....I am  not  anti  US  Americans.

But I am perpetually  wary  of  the  US  American  administration.

In my view there  is no connection other than the cheap tinsel  and  fireworks.

The  last  election  indicates  some  confirmation  to myself   at least.

[mrwebb8825]

I don't do anything stupid or illegal and never bank online so hack away, snoop away, record away. Doubt I'll get bored of my life before they do.