Wyden has been an outspoken critic of the surveillance programs. Wyden: Intel violations 'troubling'

Sen. Ron Wyden said Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies’ violations of court orders on surveillance of Americans is worse than the government is letting on.

Wyden (D-Ore.), as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is privy to classified briefings on the government’s surveillance. On Tuesday, he told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC that all he could say is that the violations are worse than being made public.


“We had a big development last Friday when Gen. [James] Clapper, the head of the intelligence agencies, admitted that the community had violated these court orders on phone record collection, and I’ll tell your viewers that those violations are significantly more troubling than the government has stated,” Wyden said.

( PHOTOS: Pols, pundits weigh in on NSA report)

Wyden was referring to a letter from Clapper in response to senators’ questions, which Wyden released on his website.

“Since the telephony metadata collection program … was initiated, there have been a number of compliance problems that have been previously identified and detailed in reports to the court and briefings to Congress as a result of Department of Justice reviews and internal NSA oversight,” Clapper wrote to Wyden. “However, there have been no findings of any intentional or bad-faith violations. These problems generally involve human error or highly sophisticated technology issues related to NSA’s compliance with particular aspects of the court’s orders.”

Wyden has been an outspoken critic of the surveillance programs but has been restricted with what he can release about them because of his position on the Intelligence Committee. He said since the government made the compliance issues public, however, he could warn about them.

“They did say last Friday that there had been violations of those court orders with respect to the bulk phone record collection, so that’s on the record, I’ll tell you those violations are more serious than they stated,” Wyden said.