Department of Justice official admits collecting data unrelated to terrorism

The second-ranking Justice Department official acknowledged that the government has been collecting phone records that are not relevant to any terrorism investigation.

Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government has the authority to seize records only if they are "relevant" to a terrorism investigation. Following leaks of classified information by former contractor Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency acknowledged that it has been using Section 215 to obtain records on virtually all phone calls within the United States. The records include the time and duration of calls, as well as the phone numbers involved but not the contents of the conversations. “How is having every phone call that I make to my wife, to my daughter relevant to any terror investigation,” Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) asked Deputy Attorney General James Cole during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “I don’t think that they would be relevant, and we would probably not seek to query them because we wouldn’t have the information that we need to make that query,” Cole said. He explained that, although the NSA acquires millions of phone records, it only accesses that massive database if it has a "reasonable, articulable suspicion that the phone number being searched is associated with certain terrorist organizations."