The top U.S. intelligence officer has found that the NSA collected more than 151 million records of Americans' phone calls last year, even after Congress limited the spy agency's ability to collect bulk phone records, Reuters reported.
The NSA only had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, plus a handful identified the year before, according to an annual report issued Tuesday by the office of National Intelligence Director Dan Coats.
The report is the first to gauge the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which mandated that the NSA may only collect phone records and contacts of people who U.S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism.
The report was released after the NSA said it stopped a form of warrantless surveillance allowing it to collect digital communication data on Americans who mentioned a foreign intelligence target.
