The federal government has released the NSA’s first transparency report

The feds issued nearly 20,000 national security letters last year according to the Director of National Intelligence in a report released this morning. The document is being touted as the NSA’s first ever transparency report made available to the public. The report is extensive. President Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to declassify as much information as possible on the extremely sensitive surveillance programs. The goal was to strike a balance between protecting national security investigations and addressing the public’s right to access certain details about intelligence gathering. The report’s release “is a good thing,” a former intelligence official said in an interview with VentureBeat. “It ups the ante.” Obama ordered the release after revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of the NSA’s massive global metadata collection programs both inside the States and abroad. The NSA is forbidden by Congress to spy internally, but the law was amended after the terror attacks of 9-11 to allow the agency and federal law enforcement exceptions in the interests of national security. The word “targets” has multiple meanings, according to the document. The reports identifies targets thus: “For example, “target” could be an individual person, a group, or an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information that the U.S. government is authorized to acquire by the above-referenced laws.”