The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima reports that telecom companies are providing the FBI with “transactional data”—the time, duration and parties involved in a phone conversation.  The law enforcement agency is then sharing that information with intelligence agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency.

How does this program exactly work and what steps are in place to ensure the FBI doesn’t just ask telecoms for all their information? One issue that Nakashima focuses on is whether the FBI is simply receiving information from the telecoms or is already tapped into the telecom’s data system. The transactional data collection is but part of the of the unresolved problem of FISA re-authorization. Read Nakashima here. MB

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