NSA provides insight into activities with transparency report

The NSA has released its first transparency report to provide insight into its activities. The figures show that in 2013, the intelligence service submitted almost 2000 requests to the secret court FISA. Furthermore, the NSA has tens of thousands of ‘targets’.

The transparency report has been put online by the NSA and is to be published every year thereafter. The records show that in the past year, the NSA made nearly 2,000 requests to the secretive US court FISA. Most of these data tapping requests were made on the basis of ‘probable cause’, i.e. having suspicions that warrant a search warrant.

In addition, the NSA reports many tens of thousands of targets. This can be both individuals and groups of people, so it is not entirely clear how many people are actually being followed by the intelligence service. It is also plausible that not all of the NSA’s investigative activities are included in the transparency report.

In recent times, there has been an increasing demand for clarity about the actions of intelligence services, to which the release of the transparency report is a response, according to the NSA. Earlier, a US judge already demanded an investigation into the rulings that the secret court FISA has made on requests from the NSA. There should be an investigation into whether these documents were rightly kept out of the public eye. Several large technology companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple already release a transparency report every year, which includes requests for data by governments.