Estimating Incidental Collection in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance: Large-Scale Multiparty Private Set Intersection with Union and Sum
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Presented at USENIX Security 2022 by
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept communications content without obtaining a warrant. While Section 702 requires targeting foreigners abroad for intelligence purposes, agencies "incidentally" collect communications to or from Americans and can search that data for purposes beyond intelligence gathering. For over a decade, members of Congress and civil society organizations have called on the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) to estimate the scale of incidental collection. Senior intelligence officials have acknowledged the value of quantitative transparency for incidental collection, but the IC has not identified a satisfactory estimation method that respects individual privacy, protects intelligence sources and methods, and imposes minimal burden on IC resources.