ODNI releases third annual statistical transparency report

On May 2, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its third annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding Use of National Security Authorities:

In June 2013, President Obama directed the Intelligence Community to declassify and make public as much information as possible about certain sensitive U.S. government surveillance programs while protecting sensitive classified intelligence and national security information.

Since then, the Director of National Intelligence has declassified and authorized the public release of thousands of pages of documents relating to the use of critical national security authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  In addition to declassifying and publicly releasing these documents, the Intelligence Community has published several reports regarding these authorities, including the Statistical Transparency Report Regarding use of National Security Authorities (hereafter the DNI’s annual transparency report), presenting metrics related to the use of certain authorities for calendar years 2013 and 2014.

On June 2, 2015, the USA FREEDOM Act was enacted, codifying many of the statistics reported in the DNI’s annual transparency reports.  The Act also expanded the scope of the information included in the reports by requiring the DNI to report information concerning United States person search terms and queries of certain unminimized, FISA-acquired information, as well as information concerning unique identifiers used to communicate information collected pursuant to certain FISA orders.  The IC implemented the USA Freedom Act on November 30, 2015.

Today, consistent with the USA FREEDOM Act and the IC’s Principles of Intelligence Transparency, we are releasing our third annual transparency report presenting statistics on how often the government uses certain national security authorities.  The DNI has declassified and directed the release of the applicable statistics covering calendar year 2015.

This information is available at  the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and ODNI’s public website dedicated to fostering greater public visibility into the intelligence activities of the government, icontherecord.tumblr.com.

View the Calendar Year 2015 Transparency Report

Download a PDF of the 2015 IC Transparency Report

View the DNI’s Certification Letter

Source: ODNI