NSA data-mining 101: two 'top secret' programs and what they do

“The programs that have been discussed over the last couple days in the press are secret in the sense that they're classified, but they're not secret in the sense that when it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program,” Obama told reporters. "With respect to all these programs, the relevant intelligence committees are fully briefed....

“These are programs that have been authorized by broad, bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006,” he added. “And so, I think at the outset it's important to understand that your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing.”

Some in Congress, including a few Republicans, backed him up on the thrust of the programs. On Thursday, Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Democrat and the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the court order concerning the telephony metadata program was just a routine reauthorization of a wider program lawmakers had long known about and had approved.

The business-records provision of FISA authorizes the executive branch to collect "metadata" concerning telephone calls, including such things as a telephone number or the length of a call, Senator Feinstein said in a statement.

“This law does not allow the government to listen in on the content of a phone call,” she said. “The executive branch’s use of this authority has been briefed extensively to the Senate and House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and detailed information has been made available to all members of Congress prior to each congressional reauthorization of this law."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan said the NSA phone-records collection has helped thwart a terrorism incident in the United States.

But other members of Congress have expressed reservations over such wholesale data-gathering by the government.

“The program Senators Feinstein and Chambliss publicly referred to today is one that I have been concerned about for years,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon said in a statement. “I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information. Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans’ privacy.”

The news reports seem certain to revive debate in Congress over whether current intelligence-gathering provisions are overbroad and whether the public should have more information about such programs.

“The problem is: we here in the Senate and the citizens we represent don't know how well any of these safeguards actually work," freshman Sen. Christopher Coons of Delaware said in December, in a statement from the Senate floor. “We know that at least one FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court has ruled that the surveillance program violated the law,” he continued. “Why? Those who know can't say, and average Americans can't know."

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