NSA statement does not deny 'spying' on members of Congress
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/04/nsa-spying-bernie-sanders-members-congress
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The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it has spied, or is
currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable.
In a letter dated 3 January, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont defined spying as gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business.
The statement read: NSAs authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of US persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all US persons. NSA is fully committed to transparency with Congress. Our interaction with Congress has been extensive both before and since the media disclosures began last June.
We are reviewing Senator Sanderss letter now, and we will continue to work to ensure that all members of Congress, including Senator Sanders, have information about NSAs mission, authorities, and programs to fully inform the discharge of their duties.
Soon after Sanders' letter was published, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) Court, the body which exists to provide government oversight of NSA surveillance activities, had renewed the domestic phone records collection order for another 90 days.
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Where is the NSA in the US Constitution?