NSA collected phone records on a lot more American citizens than it had warrants for

A report from Reuters showcased that the NSA collected phone records on a lot more American citizens than it had warrants for.

The U.S. National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records of Americans’ phone calls last year, even after Congress limited its ability to collect bulk phone records, according to an annual report issued on Tuesday by the top U.S. intelligence officer.

The report from the office of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first measure of the effects of the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA to collecting phone records and contacts of people U.S. and allied intelligence agencies suspect may have ties to terrorism.

It found that the NSA collected the 151 million records even though it had warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to spy on only 42 terrorism suspects in 2016, in addition to a handful identified the previous year.

Last Friday we touched on a report that saw the NSA stopping their program which allowed them to spy on private citizens without warrants. 

In all, according to the report, U.S. officials unmasked the names of fewer Americans in NSA eavesdropping reports in 2016 than they did the previous year, the top U.S. intelligence officer reported on Tuesday.

The report said the names of 1,934 “U.S. persons” were “unmasked” last year in response to specific requests, compared with 2,232 in 2015, but it did not identify who requested the names or on what grounds.

Officials said in the report that U.S. intelligence agencies had gone out of their way to make public more information about U.S. electronic eavesdropping.

This raises even more questions. Who was spied on? Who was unmasked? Who requested this information?

What we know so far is that Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security 2013-2017, requested the unmasking of Trump associates that had no reason to be unmasked.

We also know that during his last days as President Obama went out of his way to make sure intelligence agencies could share surveilled information on private citizens easier amongst each other.

The idea that intelligence agencies didn’t abuse their power to surveil Trump is losing it’s ground everyday.  We have connected the dots, soon the MSM will be forced too.