NSA collected 151 million phone records in 2016, despite surveillance law changes

In 2016, the National Security Agency collected more than 151 million records about Americans’ phone calls, despite Congress passing a law the previous year — the USA Freedom Act — intended to curb bulk surveillance. These records are comprised of metadata about calls (which includes time, duration, and the numbers of both recipient and caller) and their collection was revealed in an annual transparency report, published on Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Inte