NSA public records requests up 1,000% since Snowden spying revelations
The number of FOIA requests sent to the NSA increased tenfold in the aftermath of disclosures revealing the agency’s mass surveillance programs, including PRISM, Boundless Informant and others.
In the three months following initial reports on June 6 detailing
NSA surveillance programs, Freedom of Information Act queries of
the National Security Agency went up 1,054 percent.
From June 6 to September 4, the NSA received 3,382 records
requests. In that same timespan in 2012, the agency received only
293 inquiries.
The figures were supplied by public records request service
MuckRock, which requested FOIA totals for the NSA this year in
addition to any internal agency communications pertaining to its
2013 FOIA receipts.
Following revelations this summer of mass surveillance programs
supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the agency
received almost double the FOIA requests it got in all of 2012 -
1,809.
The largest chunk of public records requests occurred directly
after the first stories were released by the Guardian and The
Washington Post in early June, MuckRock reported.
“The requests have leveled off somewhat from earlier in the
summer when the first media leaks appeared, although they
continue to be much higher than normal,” an NSA FOIA official
wrote accompanying the request.
MuckRock added that many of the “unprecedented” number of
FOIA requests came from its own users.
