NSA 'Improperly' Obtained Phone Records

The National Security Agency improperly collected phone call data of Americans last fall, USA Today is reporting.

The newspaper attributed its information to documents released Wednesday to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Word of the collection of phone call records came after a previous breach by the NSA forced the agency to destroy millions of records.

The documents do not indicate how many records the NSA collected in the recent breach in October.

"These documents provide further evidence that the NSA has consistently been unable to operate the call detail record program within the bounds of the law," the ACLU said in a letter to Congress this week.

The letter claims elements within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found the October violations had a “significant impact” on privacy and civil rights, the newspaper said. 

Patrick Toomey, staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said there is "no justification" for permitting the NSA to have such collection powers.

Last year, the NSA confirmed it had obtained data from a service provider that included records the agency was not authorized to receive. The agency had acknowledged it would delete hundreds of millions of call records going as far back as 2015.

And The Wall Street Journal reported the ACLU, in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, said the documents reveal the NSA surveillance program wasn’t operating within the law and should be terminated.

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