NSA e-mail collection wider than thought

WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- Recent inquiries have heightened concerns the U.S. National Security Agency's monitoring of domestic e-mails is wider that thought, government sources say.

Several congressional committees have been investigating allegations leveled last year that the NSA has gone beyond the legal limits in sweeping up and reading domestic U.S. e-mails as part of its counter-terrorism mission, and the results of those investigations have revealed broader surveillance than previously acknowledged, unnamed current and former U.S. officials told Wednesday's New York Times.

The newspaper said a former NSA analyst contends he was trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large numbers of Americans' e-mail messages without court warrants while two other intelligence officials confirmed to the Times the program was still in operation.

House Select Intelligence Oversight Committee Chairman Rush Holt, D-N.J., said he has become increasingly concerned by the NSA's handling of domestic communications, telling the Times legal "inadvertent overcollection" of e-mails while searching for terror-related evidence can't explain all of the agency's actions.

"Some actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental," Holt said.