Patriot Act White Paper

The Justice De­part­ment has re­leased a 24-page ad­min­is­tra­tion White Pa­per that ex­plains the gov­ern­ment’s leg­al basis for the NSA’s bulk col­lec­tion of so-called tele­phone metadata - phone num­bers, dur­a­tion and dates, but not names or con­tent - un­der Sec­tion 215 of the USA Pat­ri­ot Act.