Officials: NSA collecting less than 30 percent of phone data

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- The National Security Agency is only collecting data from about 20 to 30 percent of U.S. calls because of the increased use of cellphones, officials say.

The Washington Post, citing interviews with past and present officials, reported Friday the agency is working on getting its numbers back up. In 2006, when the data collection began, the NSA was sweeping up data on almost all calls, which dropped to less than 30 percent by last summer.

The program does not involve the content of telephone calls but only the metadata on which numbers are called.

A number of cellphone providers do not turn over the information to the NSA. The officials who talked to the Post said the NSA is seeking court orders that would compel them to do so.

Officials said that in order to find useful patterns the NSA needs to have as close to 100 percent of all records as possible.

"If you're looking for the needle in the haystack, you have to have the entire haystack to look through," Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a congressional hearing in July.

Edward Felten, a computer expert at Princeton University, suggested the news that the NSA is only collecting a fraction of phone records "calls into question whether the rationale offered for the program is consistent with the way the program has been operating."