The number of times the National Security Agency identified Americans or U.S. entities last year in intelligence reports containing information from a high-profile warrantless surveillance program nearly tripled from 2022, the government disclosed on Tuesday.
The sharp increase in so-called unmaskings, to more than 31,300 times, arose from attempts by foreign hackers to infiltrate the computer systems of critical infrastructure — not individual people, officials said. In particular, a single intelligence report last year identified a “large number” of potential American entities a hacker sought to breach, the report said.
The report was the most recent set of surveillance-related statistics made public each spring by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, providing a measure of transparency into how intelligence agencies use their electronic spying powers.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, normally requires a warrant for national-security wiretapping on American soil. A provision of that law, known as Section 702, is an exception, allowing the government to collect, without a warrant, the messages and data of foreigners abroad from U.S. companies like Google and AT&T — even when they are communicating with Americans.
