Documents show NSA may have collected tens of thousands of emails of Americans
Source: Reuters
Documents show NSA may have collected tens of thousands of emails of Americans
WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:55pm EDT
(Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials released new documents on Wednesday showing that the National Security Agency may have unintentionally collected as many as 56,000 emailed communications of Americans per year between 2008 and 2011.
The officials revealed the documents as part of an effort to explain how the NSA spotted, and then fixed, technical problems which led to the inadvertent collection of emails of American citizens without warrants.
The move is the Obama administration's latest response to continuing controversy over alleged electronic eavesdropping excesses by the NSA.
The documents included a formerly "top-secret," but newly-declassified ruling by the ultra-secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in which the court itself, in an obscure footnote, estimates, based on data supplied by NSA, that between 2008 and 2011, the agency might have unintentionally collected as many as 56,000 emailed communications of Americans in each of those three years.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE97K14Y20130821