In an effort to discern how many Americans are being swept up in NSA surveillance under a law that authorizes the agency to target foreigners overseas, a coalition of more than 30 privacy and civil liberties groups on Thursday demanded that U.S. spy chief James Clapper determine and publicly disclose such information.
In a letter (pdf) addressed to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Clapper, groups including the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Sunlight Foundation request “certain basic information about how Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) affects Americans and other U.S. residents.”
The law known as Section 702—which will expire in 2017 unless it is reauthorized—allows the NSA to collect the phone calls and e-mails of anyone reasonably believed to be a foreigner overseas, as long as acquiring “foreign intelligence” is a significant purpose of the surveillance.
Yet as the Brennan Center explained in a press statement:
Despite all this, the NSA “refuses to provide even an estimate of how many Americans’ communications are picked up and handed over to the FBI,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “And the FBI won’t reveal how many times it searches this data, without a warrant or any judicial oversight, for information about American citizens.”
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