Russell Brandom reports:
Congress is trying to learn more about the NSA’s surveillance programs, and it’s not going well. In a letter delivered today to director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a group of 14 legislators (eight Democrats and six Republicans) asked for a ballpark figure on how many Americans are having their data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Section 702 is the legal justification for many of the NSA’s most invasive programs, including PRISM. But we still don’t have an exact idea of how broad its reach is. So Congress asked! They passed FISA, after all, so it’s only right that they should know how it’s being used. They don’t need an exact number on the Americans caught up in PRISM, just a ballpark. Is it a thousand? A hundred thousand? 318 million?
Read more on The Verge.