U.S. spy agency paper says fewer than 300 phone numbers closely scrutinized [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

U.S. spy agency paper says fewer than 300 phone numbers closely scrutinized

By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Sat Jun 15, 2013 8:51pm EDT

(Reuters) - The U.S. government only searched for detailed information on calls involving fewer than 300 specific phone numbers among the millions of raw phone records collected by the National Security Agency in 2012, according to a government paper obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

The unclassified paper was circulated Saturday within the government by U.S. intelligence agencies and apparently is an attempt by spy agencies and the Obama administration to rebut accusations that it overreached in investigating potential militant plots.

The administration has said that even though the NSA, according to top-secret documents made public by former agency contractor Edward Snowden, collects massive amounts of data on message traffic from both U.S. based telephone and internet companies, such data collection is legal, subject to tight controls and does not intrude on the privacy of ordinary Americans.

The paper circulated on Saturday said that data from the NSA phone and email collections programs not only led U.S. investigators to the ringleader of a plot to attack New York's subway system in 2009, but also to one of his co-conspirators in the United States.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/16/us-usa-security-idUSBRE95F00B20130616