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Department of Justice Releases Documents on Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Applications to the FISC

March 4, 2014

On Friday, the Attorney General through the Department of Justice, declassified and released 24 documents that were responsive to a portion of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. These one-page documents, titled “The Attorney General’s Report on the Use of Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” are reports to the Congressional intelligence and judiciary committees that identify how many applications the U.S. Government filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) seeking authorization to use pen registers and/or trap and trace devices, and how many the FISC authorized, during specific time periods. The documents cover the time period from 2001 through 2012.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence Public Affairs

Edited 03/04/14 at 5:15 EST – An earlier version of this release did not reflect that the Congressional judiciary committees also received the Attorney General’s reports. The original statement also indicated a date range for the released documents through 2013. To clarify, while the final document is dated 2013 it reports on numbers from 2012.