N.S.A. Experiment Traced U.S. Cellphone Locations
Source: NY Times
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency in 2010 and 2011 conducted a secret pilot project to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans’ cellphones, but the agency ultimately decided against putting such a program into play for now, according to intelligence officials.
The existence of the pilot project was recently declassified by James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but it has not been publicly disclosed. It was outlined in a draft answer obtained by The New York Times and written for Mr. Clapper to read at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday if he is asked about the topic.
The answer is one paragraph long and contains scant details. It says that the N.S.A. does not currently collect locational information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision that forms the asserted legal basis of its once-secret program that is collecting logs of all domestic phone calls from telephone companies.
“In 2010 and 2011 N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes,” the draft answer says, adding that the N.S.A. has promised to notify Congress and seek the approval of a secret surveillance court in the future before any locational data was collected using Section 215.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/us/nsa-experiment-traced-us-cellphone-locations.html?_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
Response to jakeXT (Original post)
