Though much is already known regarding the sheer scope of the National Security Agency’s harvesting of phone data, a new report reveals that the intel agency was interested in fewer than 250 individuals last year.
In the face of mounting concern regarding the NSA's impressive
ability to collect phone data in massive quantities (it has said
it is collecting less than 30 percent of Americans’ call data,
though likely far more in the past) the intelligence agency has
argued that it has sifted through that information judiciously.
According to a transparency report released on Friday – the first
instance in which the NSA has disclosed statistics of its
surveillance – the NSA performed queries of its phone records
haul for 248 “known or presumed persons” in the whole of 2013,
the Guardian reports.
"This transparency report is significant because it shows for
the first time on an annual basis both targets of business-record
orders and the number of US persons specifically targeted with
these metadata queries," said Alan Butler, a lawyer with the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The NSA has previously defended the way in which the agency
captures such a large swath of telephony information, arguing
that the broad scope allows it to effectively identify data
relevant to national security concerns.
“It needs to be the whole haystack,” NSA deputy director
John C. Inglis told Congress in October. “It needs to be such
that when you make a query you come away confident that you have
the whole answer.”
The new transparency report, therefore, seems to confirm at least
that the NSA is wholly committed to the approach articulated by
Inglis, since 248 queries represents a minuscule amount in
comparison to the hundreds of millions of Americans currently
being swept in by its electronic surveillance.
Moreover, the NSA’s report also reflects the legal complexity
used to justify queries over the vast data trove that it
maintains. For example, the agency discloses 1,767 orders made
under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, affecting 1,144
“targets” which might include individuals, groups, or
organizations comprising several individuals. Interpreted
broadly, those orders could amount to thousands, or potentially
millions.
The intel agency also includes the number of National Security
Letters – which are invoked by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation over phone data – though that does not specify the
number of Americans that might have been looked at. The NSA
simply records that the FBI issued 19,212 such letters in 2013,
with 38,832 “requests for information,” reports the Guardian.
Though critics of the NSA’s surveillance programs are likely to
find useful information within the agency’s latest efforts at
transparency, it is likely only to be seen as a first and
incomplete step, and one conflated by the legal framework used by
various law enforcement interests that access that data.
"The ODNI report calls itself into question by saying they're
providing numbers, but immediately saying those numbers are only
true to the extent the intelligence community believes it can
release them without compromising sensitive information,"
said Amie Stepanovich of the digital rights group Access.