USA Today is reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been inundated with Freedom of Information (FOIA) Requests in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations of domestic surveillance carried out be the Obama Administration.
“We’ve had requests from individuals who want any records we have on their phone calls, their phone numbers, their e-mail addresses, their IP addresses, anything like that,” said Pamela Phillips who handles FOIA requests for the NSA.
According to Phillips, Americans’ requests for information from the agency have increased a mind-boggling 988% since the Snowden story broke this year.
During the first quarter of the NSA fiscal year, which went from October to December, it received 257 open-records requests. The next quarter, it received 241. However, on June 6, at the end of NSA’s third fiscal quarter, news of Snowden’s leaks hit the press, and the agency got 1,302 requests.
In the next three months, the NSA received 2,538 requests. The spike has continued into the fall months and has overwhelmed her staff, Phillips said.
The thousands of Americans demanding accountability from the NSA will be disappointed when they get their response. According to Phillips, the secretive agency is sending out a form letter informing Americans that the NSA can neither confirm nor deny that any information has been gathered.
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