The latest secret document dump

What you need to know

James Clapper
(Image credit: (Alex Wong/Getty Images))

The Director of National Intelligence released more than 2,000 pages of formerly top secret documents today, including a lengthy description of a major email metadata collection program that was discontinued in 2011 — a program that collected, in bulk, the email metadata associated with millions of Americans. The NSA, somewhat confusingly, refers to this program as the Pen Register/Trap and Trace, PR/TT program, even though it has nothing to do with traditional telephone calls, which is what those terms are generally associated with. (The collection of telephone records is referred to as the "BR FISA" collection).

The PR/TT program, the NSA says, was subject to rigorous oversight. Compliance problems arose in 2009, and the agency suspended the program. Here are details from the court order authorizing it.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.