A U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program targeting foreign terrorism suspects does what Congress intended it to do, members of a government privacy oversight board said Wednesday, defending their report that finds the spying legal and effective.
A U.S. government privacy oversight board has found that the National Security Agency and other agencies have not misused the provisions of the country's overseas surveillance program, but cautioned that certain aspects of the program, such as the incidental collection of communications of U.S. persons, raises privacy concerns.
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.
Critics of the U.S. National Security Agency's U.S. telephone records program are missing the point when they say the agency can't point to one case where the collection was critical to preventing terrorism, two people formerly involved with the program said.
The U.S. National Security Agency should abandon its collection of U.S. telephone records because the surveillance program is illegal, a government privacy oversight board said.