New FOIA request seeks stats on Justice Department surveillance
(ACLU release) Today the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Justice Department asking it to make public how frequently it uses surveillance tools called pen registers and trap and trace devices to intercept Americans’ communications. These devices make it possible for the government to access the to/from lines of emails, the telephone numbers people dial as well from which they receive calls, and the IP addresses of the websites they visit.
[T]he Justice Department is legally mandated to compile statistics about how frequently it uses pen registers and trap and trace devices and submit them to Congress, but it has repeatedly failed to live up to that obligation.