The US National Security Agency (NSA) collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Wednesday by the top US intelligence officer.
The report from the office of director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people US and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism.
It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016. The NSA has been gathering a vast quantity of telephone “metadata,” records of callers’ and recipients’ phone numbers and the times and durations of the calls, but not their content, since the 9/11 attacks.
The report came as the US Congress faced a decision on whether to reauthorise Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the NSA to collect foreign intelligence information on non-US persons outside the US, and is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.
