Via Newsmax:
The National Security Agency has gotten the green light to continue its controversial collection of U.S. phone call records.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorized the program for limited time periods — with a requirement that the government submit new requests every several weeks, The Hill reported Friday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court’s approval in a statement late Friday.
The phone record snooping — first revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden — generated criticism from privacy advocates and some lawmakers, who are concerned the collection affects millions of Americans who aren’t suspected of any wrongdoing.
Mark Rumold, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy watchdog group, told The Baltimore Sun in June NSA’s program “targets more people than has ever been issued before, that we have known about publicly, in the history of the United States.”
“There has been a significant amount of debate about the subpoenaing of AP reporters’ phone records,” Rumold said. “This is that on steroids. It’s everyone.”
The NSA collects records from phone companies — like phone numbers, call times and call durations — of all U.S. calls and then compiles them in a database, though the administration insists it doesn’t include any conversations, The Hill reported.
NSA analysts are only allowed to search the database if there is a “reasonable, articulable suspicion,” that a phone number is connected to terrorism, The Hill reported.