§1846 Congressional oversight

Summary

The Attorney General must, twice a year, fully tell the House and Senate intelligence and judiciary committees about all uses of pen registers and trap-and-trace devices under this law. The Attorney General also must send a report about the prior six months with specific totals and details. The report must list the total number of applications for orders, the total number of orders granted, modified, or denied, how many devices were authorized in emergencies and how many of those later got orders approving or denying them, which departments or agencies asked for orders, and those same totals broken down by each department or agency. The report must give a good-faith estimate of how many subjects were targeted, rounded to the nearest 500, including the number of United States persons in bands of 500 starting with 0–499, and how many of those U.S. persons’ information was reviewed or accessed by a federal officer, employee, or agent, also in 500-person bands. The report should be unclassified if that does not harm national security, and within 7 days the Attorney General must make it public or publish an unclassified summary or a redacted version.