Recent media stories about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance address unauthorized disclosures of two different intelligence collection programs. These programs arise from provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, they rely on separate authorities, collect different types of information, and raise different policy questions. As such, where possible, the information contained in this report distinguishes between the two. For both programs, there is a tension between the speed and convenience with which the government can access data of possible intelligence value and the mechanisms intended to safeguard civil liberties. The first program collects and stores in bulk domestic phone records that some argue could be gathered to equal effect through more focused records requests. The second program targets the electronic communications of non-U.S. persons while they are abroad, but also collects some communications unrelated to those targets. The following sections address (1) what information is being collected; (2) the legal basis for the collection; (3) existing oversight mechanisms; and (4) arguments for and against the two programs. The last section of this report discusses legislation that has been proposed in response to information disclosed about NSA surveillance. Because documents leaked to the news media may be classified, CRS is precluded from providing a detailed analysis of the content of those documents. The information in this report is based largely on public comments from intelligence officials and Members of Congress. Domestic Collection of Domestic Phone Records — collected under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT: On Wednesday, June 5, 2013, The Guardian reported that NSA collects in bulk the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon, pursuant to an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Intelligence officials and leaders of the congressional intelligence committees have confirmed the existence of this domestic phone records collection program, although they have not identified the companies providing the records. It has been alleged, but not confirmed, that similar orders have been sent to other telecommunications providers. The court order disclosed by T he Guardian was a three-month extension of a program that has been going on for seven years. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has acknowledged the breadth of the program, analogizing it to "a huge library with literally millions of volumes of books," but has stated that data about Americans in the possession of the United States government can only be accessed under specific circumstances. The program collects "metadata"—a term used in this context to refer to data about a phone call, but not the phone conversation itself. Intelligence officials have stated that the data are limited to the number that was dialed from, the number that was dialed to, and the date and duration of the call. The data do not include cell site location information. Intelligence officials have committed to alerting Members of Congress before collecting that location information, suggesting they currently have the authority to do so. The data must be destroyed within five years of acquisition. Information collected does not include the location of the call (beyond the area code identified in the phone number), the content of the call, or the identity of the subscriber. However, some civil liberties advocates have argued that a telephone number today is essentially a unique identifier that can be easily tied to a person's identity by other means and that the distinction between a telephone number and subscriber identity is therefore insignificant. On June 27, 2013, The Guardian published an article alleging that NSA previously collected the metadata for Internet-based communications (email being the prime example) for Americans inside the United States. A spokesman for the DNI confirmed The Guardian 's account, but said this program was discontinued in 2011. Intelligence officials have stated that, pursuant to the same FISA authorities, NSA does not currently collect in bulk the metadata of these types of communications. The collection of Internet metadata was based on separate FISA authorities. Some have expressed concern that those authorities could again be used to collect Internet metadata in the future. Domestic Collection of Foreign Internet-Related Data —collected under Section 702 of FISA: The Washington Post reported on June 6th, 2013, that, "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets." The Guardian ran a similar story that same day. These articles referred to a system called PRISM allegedly used to collect this data. Outside commentators and government officials have argued that portions of these stories are inaccurate. Public comments from the Administration indicate this intelligence collection is more targeted in scope than was suggested by these articles, and major technology companies have denied giving the federal government direct access to their servers. The DNI on June 8, 2013, released a public statement saying, " The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." A fact sheet provided by the DNI stated that PRISM is an internal government computer system used to facilitate access to these communications. In accordance with Section 702, this collection program appears largely to involve the collection of data, including the content of communications, of foreign targets overseas whose emails and other forms of electronic communication flow through networks in the United States. Compared to the breadth of phone records collection under Section 215, this program is more discriminating in terms of its targets—it is focused on the communications of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States—but broader in terms of the type of information collected. Examples cited by the Administration include the email content of communications with individuals inside the United States, but in those cases the targets of the intelligence collection appear to have been non-U.S. citizens located outside the United States. The original press articles and more recent stories have suggested NSA monitors or can monitor the vast majority of the world's Internet traffic. NSA has stated that it "touches" only 1.6% of Internet traffic and "selects for review" 0.025% of Internet traffic. These portrayals by both critics and proponents may provide an incomplete account of NSA collection because they incorporate certain assumptions about that collection and about what types of Internet traffic are relevant to the public debate about Section 702 authorities. In August, the Office of the DNI released an October 2011 opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that provided additional insight into the scope and nature of Section 702 collection. According to the 2011 opinion, NSA collected 250 million Internet communications per year using 702 authorities. Of these communications, 91% were acquired "directly from Internet Service Providers." The opinion did not identify specific providers or describe the means NSA uses to "directly" acquire communications. The other 9% were acquired through what NSA calls "upstream collection," meaning acquisition while Internet traffic is in transit from one unspecified location to another. NSA also has two methods for collecting information about a specific target; "to/from" communications collection, in which the target is the sender or receiver of the Internet communications; and "about" communications collection, in which the target is mentioned in the communications of non-targets. "About" communications are acquired through upstream collection. Because this method does not collect the communications to or from specific individuals but rather communications that mention those individuals, it implicates a potentially broader swath of communications and raises additional civil liberties concerns. Domestic Phone Records: Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT, which is the authority under which the collection of domestic phone records has been authorized, broadened government access to private business records by both enlarging the scope of materials that may be sought and lowering the legal standard required to be met. Specifically, Section 215 modified the business records provisions of FISA to allow the FBI to apply to the FISC for an order compelling a person to produce "any tangible thing," including records held by a telecommunications provider concerning the number and length of communications, but not the contents of those communications. In 2005, the provision was further amended to require the FBI to provide a statement of facts showing that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that the tangible things sought are "relevant to an authorized investigation (other than a threat assessment)" into foreign intelligence, international terrorism, or espionage. The phrase "reasonable grounds to believe" is not defined by FISA, but has been used interchangeably with the "reasonable suspicion" standard, a less stringent standard than "probable cause." Although there are not any publicly available judicial opinions interpreting this language in the context of Section 215, it may be helpful to look at appellate courts' interpretations of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), as it similarly authorizes law enforcement to access telecommunications transactional records (as well as stored electronic communications) upon a showing that "there are reasonable grounds to believe" that the information sought is "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation." Under the SCA, the collection of stored email has been held to meet that standard in the context of a "complex, large-scale mail and wire fraud operation" in which "interviews of current and former employees of the target company suggest that electronic mail is a vital communication tool that has been used to perpetuate the fraudulent conduct" and "various sources [have verified] that [the provider who had custody of the email] provides electronic communications services to certain individual(s) [under] investigation." Similarly, obtaining the internet protocol (IP) address and name associated with a Yahoo! account was justified when a police officer received a tip from an individual that he had received what appeared to be child pornography from that Yahoo! account. "Relevancy" is also not defined by FISA, but is generally understood to be a less stringent standard than probable cause requiring only that the information sought would tend to prove or disprove a fact at issue. In August 2013, the Obama Administration released a whitepaper providing a legal analysis of the bulk collection of telephony metadata under Section 215. Included in this whitepaper was an examination of the term "relevancy" as used in Section 215.