NSA Tunnels Two To Three Tips To FBI On Daily Basis

Some new documents have surfaced from the NSA that were recently declassified showing the NSA may still be sending tips to the FBI resulting from its data collection procedures. The documents show that the FBI was receiving on the order of two to three tips per day since 2006 from the NSA.

The documents were declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence hours after President Obama delivered his speech last Friday on reforms for intelligence and surveillance by the government in the US. As with most documents declassified by the government, they have reportedly been heavily redacted.

The documents are court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and show requests to the court to order an entity to provide "tangible things" under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The documents don't note who or what the target is or which company or organization they apply to.

A footnote in the court order noted that the NSA expected to continue to send the FBI "approximately three" telephone identifiers per day. The orders do stipulate that the courts required the NSA to access the metadata archive when there was "reasonable, articulable, suspicion." The document from 2009 also stated that the government hadn't lived up to the court requirement for accessing the data.

SOURCE: ArsTechnica