Spies see obstacles for calculating surveillance of Americans

Federal intelligence officials would face multiple obstacles in calculating the number of Americans whose data is swept up in a large surveillance regime meant to target foreigners, the nation’s top spy said April 25. Intelligence agents will “do our best” to come up with a way to roughly calculate how many Americans are included in the spying, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said. Still, he suggested a public estimate might not be possible and that "any methodology we come up with will not be completely satisfactory to all parties."

The comments could be troubling for privacy advocates and a bipartisan collection of members of Congress, who asked Director Clapper’s office to come up with an estimate in a letter recently. “Even a rough estimate of the number of US persons impacted by these programs will help us to evaluate” how pervasive the collection of Americans’ data is, 14 members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Director Clapper. Federal surveillance law includes additional protections to safeguard the privacy of Americans over foreign citizens, who do not enjoy the same rights under the Constitution.