The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its fifth annual report that provides statistics on how frequent the federal government uses national security authorities.
ODNI said in the transparency report published Friday that the National Security Agency collected more than 534 million call detail records in 2017, up from 151 million phone records recorded in 2016.
The number of national security letters issued rose from 12,150 in 2016 to 12,762 last year, while the number of requests for information also increased to at least 41,000 from nearly 25,000 in 2016.
The report showed that the total number of orders for the use of pen register and trap-and-trace devices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act dropped by nearly half from 60 in 2016 to 33 in 2017.
ODNI noted that the total number of “probable cause†court orders under FISA’s sections 703 and 704 and titles I and III provisions declined from 1,559 in 2016 to 1,437 in 2017.
The estimated number of targets under those provisions who are non-U.S. citizens reached 1,038 last year, down from 1,559 in 2016.
