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In 2016, the National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records about Americans phone calls, despite Congress passing a law the previous year the USA Freedom Act intended to curb bulk surveillance. These records are comprised of metadata about calls (which includes time, duration, and the numbers of both recipient and caller) and their collection was revealed in an annual transparency report, published on Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report is the first assessment the public has seen of the impact of the USA Freedom Act, and shows the difficulty the NSA has reining in surveillance while continuing to collect useful intelligence. This Freedom Act was passed in 2015 after the Snowden revelations, and limits the NSA to collecting call metadata about individuals suspected of having ties to terrorism. The report shows that in 2016 the NSA received warrants to collect such information on only 46 terrorism suspects.

According to Reuters, officials from the NSA defended the report by saying that the figure of 151 million records was tiny compared to the scope of US surveillance pre-Snowden. (At that time the agency could scoop up billions of records per day, said one 2014 study.) The figure of 151 million is also misleading, said the NSA, as it counts multiple calls made to or from the same phone number. This, said the agency, explains the discrepancy between the small number of warrants and the huge number of records. However, the NSA did not provide a breakdown of the exact number of individuals caught up in the surveillance program, and many privacy advocates will be angered by the huge number of records still being collected.

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NSA collected 151 million phone records in 2016, despite surveillance law changes - The Verge

House Intelligence Committee members emerged tight-lipped from a closed-door briefing with FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency head Adm. Michael Rogers on Thursday.

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who is leading the committees investigation into Russian interference in the election, appeared briefly alongside the committee's ranking member, Adam SchiffAdam SchiffSchiff: Yates testimony could come within 'weeks' Overnight Cyber: FBI, NSA chiefs brief House Intel behind closed doors | DHS warns Congress on phone security Comey, NSA chief brief House panel amid Russia probe MORE (D-Calif.) at the close of the meeting to characterize the meeting as valuable but said little else.

Conaway took over the probe early last month following the recusal of committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), whose relationship with Schiff had deteriorated to the level of the pair holding dueling press conferences regarding Nuness handling of the investigation.

In a joint statement issued after the hearing Thursday, Conaway and Schiff indicated that an open hearing with several high-ranking Obama officials including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is still in the cards.

We are currently sending out invitations for witnesses to testify and requests for pertinent documents, and look forward to the next steps of this investigation, including witness interviews and an open hearing with Sally Yates, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, and [former CIA Director] John Brennan, the statement read.

Much of the acrimony on the committee had centered on an appearance by Yates, which had been scheduled for March but was canceled at the last minute by Nunes when he helmed the Russia investigation.

Republicans claimed that the committee needed to interview Comey and Rogers in a closed setting first, a move that Democrats argued was intended to shield the White House.

Reports have indicated that Yates was likely to offer testimony that would contradict that of Trump administration officials.

The week before Yates had been scheduled to testify, Comey confirmed the existence of the FBIs investigation into ties between members of President Trumps campaign and Russia in the panels first open hearing.

Yates is now set to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Monday. The House committee has been in talks with the Senate committee to determine whether she will appear before both panels.

Other lawmakers exiting Thursdays two-and-a-half-hour briefing which was interrupted briefly so lawmakers could vote on the GOP healthcare bill were largely silent, deferring to the chair and ranking member.

In a public appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey on Wednesday said that he was "mildly nauseous" at the idea that his handling of the probe into Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonProtesters turn out for Trump's New York return Clinton urges 'fight' against the GOP following ObamaCare vote Comey, NSA chief brief House panel amid Russia probe MORE's private email server may have impacted the outcome of the 2016 election, but maintained that he would make the same choices again given the chance.

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Comey, NSA chief brief House panel amid Russia probe - The Hill

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During his final year in office, President Obamas team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election, reported Circa on Thursday. The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseasabout Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the name of national security. A court affirmed his order.

The NSA is currently prohibited from spying directly on U.S. citizens. However, it is reported thatIn all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses.

The activity increased by 27.5 percent over the prior year, according to the report, and more than triple the 9,500 such searches that occurred in 2013, the first year such data was kept.

The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive spike from the 198 names searched in 2013, Circa claimed. The searches ultimately resulted in 3,134 NSA intelligence reports with unredacted U.S. names being distributed across government in 2016, and another 3,354 reports in 2015. About half the time, U.S. identities were unredacted in the original reports while the other half were unmasked after the fact by special request of Obama administration officials.

Included in this list of names were campaign and transition associates of President Trump, as well as members of Congress, according toCirca, who allegedly spoke with a U.S. official.

There is no doubt that there was a spike in the requests to search for Americans in the NSA database, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Its simply easier for people to make requests. And while we have safeguards, there is always concern and vigilance about possible political or prurient motives that go beyond national security concerns.

Neema Singh Guliani, who acts as the ACLUs legislative counsel, also claimed in a comment that the information being increasingly mined about Americans has nothing to do with terrorism.

I think it is alarming. There seems to be a universal trendtoward more surveillance and more surveillance that impacts Americans privacy without obtaining a warrant, said the ACLUs legislative counsel, Neema Singh Guliani. This data confirms that there is a lack of acknowledgment that information is being specifically and increasingly mined about Americans for investigations that have little or nothing to do with international terrorism.

Caveated in the report, however, is that this data excludes the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who are likely to have even more information on the subject.

The data kept by ODNI is missing some information from one of the largest consumers of NSA intelligence, the FBI, Circa noted. And officials acknowledge the numbers are likely much higher when the FBIs activity isadded.

This week, it was reported that the NSA ignored a law change and continued to collect phone records from U.S. citizens, while in April, it was revealed that the agency had eavesdropped on citizens using a blimp over Maryland.

Charlie Nash is a reporterforBreitbart Tech. You can follow himon Twitter@MrNashingtonorlike his page at Facebook.

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Report: Obama Sought NSA Intel on 'Thousands of Americans', Including Trump Campaign During 2016 Election - Breitbart News

Former intelligence contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden has once and for all been honored by a Norwegian free expression group following a lengthy legal battle before the nations highest court.

Members of the Norwegian chapter of PEN personally awarded Mr. Snowden with its annual Ossietzky Prize in Moscow last month in place of holding a ceremony in Oslo as desired, the groups head, Hege Newth Nouri, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Mr. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, was first announced as the recipient of the groups annual free expression award in April 2016 for leaking NSA documents unveiling the U.S. governments questionable, extensive global surveillance, according to Ms. Nouri and company. He remains the subject of an active arrest warrant for related charges four years later, but has evaded U.S. authorities cloaked by Russian asylum.

Lawyers for the PEN Clubs Norwegian chapter fought for months in local and federal courts to let Mr. Snowden pick up his award in person without being whisked away to the U.S. and potentially incarcerated for decades. Attorneys asked an Oslo City Court judge last April to let Mr. Snowden safely attend the ceremony, but their petition was rejected two months later. The case was unsuccessfully brought before a three-person appeals court and was eventually dismissed by the Norwegian Supreme Court last November.

The award was given to Mr. Snowden on April 21 in Moscow but went unreported for a week. English news reports of the event first appeared online Wednesday after Ms. Nouri confirmed the meeting to the AP.

Im grateful for the support from Norwegian PEN Mr. Snowdensaid at the ceremony, according to PEN.

Nevertheless, the NSA leaker said he was disappointed Norway wouldnt allow him safe passage so he could personally pick up his award, a lithography by Norwegian artist Nico Wideberg.

Its sad, Mr. Snowdentold Norways Aftenposten, according to an English translation of a recent interview. The Norwegian government had the opportunity to recognize what had been done in this case when the Norwegian PEN invited me to Norway to receive the prize, but instead they chose to use lawyers to fight in court, he said.

Mr. Snowden, 33, has resided around Moscow since being granted asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013. His current asylum status is set to expire in 2021. In January, meanwhile, his attorneys made a case for asylum before the European Parliament.

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Edward Snowden honored for NSA leaks in Moscow by Norwegian free expression group - Washington Times

A news release posted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on May 2 linked to the ODNIs annual Statistical Transparency Report regarding the use of national security authorities for calendar year 2016. The Circa News organization (owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group) analyzed the data in the report and two days after it was released broke the story that the Obama administration distributed thousands of intelligence reports with theunredactednames of U.S. residents during the 2016 election.

In the interest of maintaining privacy, the government often redacts, or removes, private or sensitive information from reports prior to releasing them for publication.

Circa News noted in its report:

During his final year in office, President Obamas team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election.

Extracting data from the ODNI report, Circa reported that government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata. This metadata includes telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. These searches amounted to a 27.5 percent increase over the prior year and more than triple the 9,500 such searches that occurred in 2013, the first year that records of the data was kept.

In 2016, government analysts reviewed the actual contents of NSA-intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a huge increase over the 198 names searched in 2013.

The NSA produced 3,134 intelligence reports with unredacted names of U.S. residents based on the searches. These reports were distributed across government agencies in 2016, and another 3,354 reports were distributed in 2015. In about half of these reports, U.S. identities were unredacted in the original reports, while in the other half they were restored and included afterwards upon special requests from Obama administration officials.

One of the more significant factors revealed was that among those whose names were made available in the reports released in 2016 or early 2017 were campaign or transition associates of President Trump and members of Congress and their staffers. Circa cited sources with direct knowledge of this information.

Around 20 U.S. officials have the power to unmask a previously redacted name a practice that was once considered a rare act.

The justification to do so need only be that the identity of the United States person is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance, according to a 2011 document related to Obamas easing of intelligence rules.

As a community, we look for new ways to enhance transparency, the May 2 ODNI news release quoted Alex Joel, who leads ODNIs Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency. Our goal is to provide relevant information, distilled into an accessible format. This year's report leans forward in that direction, providing significant information beyond whats statutorily required, and reflecting our concerted effort to enhance clarity.

The introduction to ODNIs Statistical Transparency Report for 2016 explained some of the legal regulations governing national security authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, it explained that both FISA Title I and FISA Title III require a probable cause court order to target individuals within the United States regardless of U.S. person status.

The ODNI report also indicates that strict rules, which we partially quoted previously, are at least theoretically in place for masking the identity of U.S. person who was under surveillance. However, unmasking may take place on an undefined need to know basis. It states:

Recipients of NSAs classified reports, such as other Federal agencies, may request that NSA provide the true identity of a masked U.S. person referenced in an intelligence report. The requested identity information is released only if the requesting recipient has a legitimate need to know the identity of the U.S. person and has the appropriate security clearances, and if the dissemination of the U.S. persons identity would be consistent with NSAs minimization procedures (e.g., the identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance). Furthermore, per NSA policy, NSA is allowed to unmask the identity for the specific requesting recipient only where specific additional controls are in place to preclude its further dissemination and additional approval has been provided by a designated NSA official.

As noted earlier, the above rules indicate that the need to know involves only cases where the persons identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance.

However, it is apparent from the report that this need to know privilege was extended rather loosely by the Obama administration and that the privacy of many U.S. citizens who were subjected to NSA surveillance was not respected.

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Obama Team Distributed Thousands of NSA Data Reports Showing Names of US Residents in 2016 - The New American