The National Security Agency violated its own privacy procedures on domestic phone surveillance for three years, according to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court documents released this week. The NSA is required to show a “reasonable, articulate suspicion” that a phone number it seeks to track is associated with a terrorist group. But between 2006 and 2009, only 1,935 of the 17,835 phone numbers on its “alert list” met that standard. In March 2009, intelligence court Judge Reggie Walton scolded the government for having “frequently and systematically violated” privacy rules. “Nobody at NSA really had a full understanding of the program at the time,” said a senior intelligence official.
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