The National Security Agency (NSA) collected more than 530 million phone calls and texts from individuals around the world in 2017, more than three times the number gathered the previous year.
In the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's fifth annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding Use of National Security Authorities for Calendar Year 2017, the agency reported having 534.4 million call detail records for the year, up from 151.1 million in 2016. These figures include domestic and foreign numbers and there could be duplicate records included.
The reason for the huge uptick in records collected in 2017 is not due to a change in recording methods, but likely because the number of court-approved selection terms, like phone numbers and the amount of data the telecoms retain, changes from year to year, a spokesman for the ODNI told The Hill.
