Significant Increase in Collection of American Citizens' Phone Records in 2017

The National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States collected 534 million phone calls and text messages from American citizens last year, which is three times the amount compared to 2016. The official report from the NSA, released on Friday, April 14, does not specify the reason for the significant increase in the recording of American citizens' conversations in 2017. The New York Times states that this remarkable increase indicates that after the law passed by Congress in 2015 regarding the collection and recording of citizens' conversations, the agency continues to gather a substantial amount of citizens' information. The 2015 law ended the NSA's secret program that systematically and bulk recorded billions of conversations and calls from American citizens daily. This secret program was revealed in 2013 by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. However, Congress granted the NSA a new system authorization, under which bulk data remains with telecommunications companies, but the agency can request copies of information on specific individuals and anyone they have contacted from these companies. According to American intelligence officials, the 534 million phone calls and text messages collected and recorded in 2017 include various calls from a single phone, which increases the mentioned figure. These officials add that when a phone call occurs between two different telecommunications companies, the number increases due to the recording of the conversation from both companies. Nevertheless, the increase in the recording of conversations has raised concerns among privacy advocates. Robin Green, a consultant at the 'Technology Institute' in Washington, states, 'The transparency of the intelligence community must go beyond this and explain the significant increase in data collection.' The NSA report also indicates that the collection of information from non-Americans outside the U.S., conducted under 'Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,' has increased. According to the announced statistics, compared to 2013, when information from 89,138 non-Americans outside the U.S. was collected, this number reached 129,080 in 2017, marking a 45% increase. Monitoring foreign individuals under this program does not require a court order. U.S. intelligence agencies consider Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act essential for national security, but privacy advocates argue that this program inadvertently records an unknown volume of information from Americans as well.