| NSA 'may not realize' it collected info on innocent Americans, top US spy says | | Print | |
| 09/26/07 | |
 Powerful supercomputers are vacuuming up so much information that logs of calls to or from innocent Americans could exist in government databases indefinitely, the nation's top intelligence official said Tuesday. "You may not even realize it's in the database because you do lots of collection," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said, referring to the "inadvertent collection" of Americans' communications through a vast surveillance program instituted after 9/11. An untold number of communication logs on US citizens could exist within a National Security Agency database of information gained through warrantless wiretaps of foreigners abroad, McConnell said, because NSA spies do not examine the full contents on all the information it collects until it has a reason to do so. "If it's foreign intelligence, it's treated the way we discussed," and the government works to secure a warrant against anyone within the US it has reason to believe deserves further surveillance, McConnell said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. "If it's now recognized as incidental, it would be expunged from the database." The full scope of Americans who have been inadvertently and unknowingly snared in the warrantless wiretapping program remains murky and elusive. On Tuesday, Sen. Russ Feingold pressed McConnell on whether recent updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorized "bulk collection" on calls from abroad into America. "It would be authorized, if it were physically possible to do so," McConnell said. "But the purpose of the authorization is for foreign intelligence." Feingold pressed, "So there is no language actually prohibiting this?" As long as the communication is "foreign, in a foreign country, for intelligence purposes," there's not, McConnell said. McConnell told the El Paso Times last month that "100 or less" US persons were targets of foreign intelligence gathering. But that number only represents those for whom the government received a warrant to spy on, McConnell clarified in later congressional testimony. The intelligence director then insisted that a "small" number of Americans had been spied on -- purposefully or not -- although he noted that designation should be judged in context of the "billions of transactions" monitored by the NSA.
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