The U.S. National Security Agency is reportedly intercepting Internet communications from U.S. residents without getting court-ordered warrants, in an effort to hunt down malicious hackers.
The U.S. Congress should kill the section of the Patriot Act that has allowed the National Security Agency to collect millions of phone records from the nation's residents, instead of trying to amend it, a civil liberties advocate said Friday.
The U.S. Congress is unlikely to pass legislation to end the National Security Agency's widespread collection of U.S. telephone records before leaving Washington, D.C., on a two-month break.
The FBI and CIA can also query the content of U.S. residents' electronic communications that the National Security Agency inadvertently collects when targeting foreign terrorism suspects, an intelligence official said.
A U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program focused on overseas telephone and email communications is targeted and narrow, and not the bulk collection portrayed in numerous news reports from recent months, U.S. officials told a privacy watchdog board Wednesday.