NSA collected much less data than indicated
Less than one-third of calls intercepted
WASHINGTON – Although U.S. intelligence officials have indicated since last summer that the National Security Agency was vacuuming up nearly every American telephone record for counter-terrorism investigations, officials acknowledged Friday that the spy agency collects data from less than a third of U.S. calls because it can’t keep pace with cellphone usage.
In a speech last month, President Barack Obama called the bulk collection of telephone records the most controversial part of the debate over security and privacy sparked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified material. Obama announced plans to impose greater judicial review on the program and to limit how it can be used.
But the NSA operation now seems far less pervasive than it appeared, raising questions about whether it is as essential a terrorist-fighting tool as the NSA and its supporters have argued.
Rather than sweeping in all U.S. call records, officials said, the NSA is gathering toll records from most domestic land-line calls, but is incapable of collecting those from most cellphone or Internet calls.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not correct the public record because they did not want to tip off potential adversaries to obvious gaps in the coverage.
“We didn’t want to tell the bad guys to go out and get a cellphone,” one senior intelligence official said.
The NSA aims to build the technical capacity over the next few years to collect toll records from every domestic land line and cellphone call, assuming Congress extends authority for Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act after it expires in June 2015.
Once the capacity is available, the agency would seek court orders to require telecommunications companies that do not currently deliver their records to the NSA to do so. The records contain phone numbers, times and lengths of each call, but not the content or anyone’s name.
Civil liberties activists said the new disclosure did not change their view that the NSA database of billions of domestic call records was unnecessary and could lead to government abuse.
“I don’t find this revelation very reassuring,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an email. “To accept their legal reasoning is to accept that they will eventually collect everything, even if they’re not doing so already. They’re arguing that they have the right to collect it all.”
The NSA declined to discuss the gap.
“While we are not going to discuss specific intelligence collection methods, we are always evaluating our activities to ensure they are keeping pace with changes in technology,” Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Two of the most vocal congressional critics of the NSA program, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, had no comment Friday.