Intelligence officials today released top secret internal briefings they had provided to members of Congress that outline the dragnet phone call metadata surveillance program lawmakers secretly knew about but could not tell Americans when publicly voting for it.

The disclosure of the classified documents back assertions from the government, and even some members of Congress, that lawmakers were well in the loop of the dragnet surveillance program disclosed by the Guardian newspaper last month based on secret documents from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. Yet lawmakers were prohibited from publicly discussing the classified program, although the House and Senate subsequently authorized the dragnet in public votes on at least two occasions without the general public's knowledge.

The release of the documents is intended to allay concerns that the Obama administration was overstepping its legal authority in carrying out the spy program, which is now under attack in courtrooms from San Francisco to the District of Columbia. It could also be that the NSA is feeling lonely in taking all the heat for the surveillance, and wants to bring its congressional co-conspirators into the party.

At an oversight hearing today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Attorney General James Cole reiterated the point that the program – although kept from the American public – was no secret on Capitol Hill.

"In fact, all three branches of government play a significant role in the oversight of these programs. The judiciary – through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – plays a role in authorizing the programs and overseeing compliance. The Executive Branch conducts extensive internal reviews to ensure compliance, and Congress passes the laws, oversees our implementation of those laws, and determines whether or not the current laws should be reauthorized and in what form." (.pdf)

The released documents, one dated February 2, 2011 (.pdf), and the other December 14, 2009 (.pdf), were made "available to all Members of Congress" to "inform the legislative debate" as the Obama administration privately lobbied Congress to reauthorize the programs under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

According to the 2011 Top Secret document:

Under the program based on Section 215, NSA is authorized to collect from certain telecommunications providers certain business records that contain information about communications between two telephone numbers, such as the date, time, and duration of a call. There is no collection of content of any telephone call under this program, and under longstanding Supreme Court precedent the information collected is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. In this program, court orders (generally lasting 90 days) are served on [Reporter's Note: Here two lines listing the names of telephone carriers are redacted]. The orders generally require production of the business records (as described above) relating to substantially all of the telephone calls handled by the companies, including both calls made between the United States and a foreign county and calls made entirely within the United States.

A similar explanation of the program was described in the 2009 Top Secret briefing document. In the end, both the House and Senate reauthorized the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act that kept the surveillance program running.

The government unveiled the documents today following the* Guardian* posting in June of a leaked copy of a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion requiring Verizon Business to provide the National Security Agency the phone numbers of both parties involved in all calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, conceded today that the dragnet was no secret among lawmakers. But he noted a sense of irony, that lawmakers couldn't publicly discuss it.

"But of course you can't talk about it," he said.

One of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — allows the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of "tangible" records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies.

Under the Patriot Act, the government only needs to show that the information is "relevant" to an authorized investigation.

Meanwhile, the government today also released a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion detailing how the massive database is used. The government has said it has queried the database using "300 unique identifiers" last year searching for terrorist activity.

About two dozen officials have access to the database, the highly redacted opinion said.

According to the +++inset-left

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