§1813 Procedures for the Retention of Incidentally Acquired Communications

Summary

Covered communication: a nonpublic phone or electronic message picked up without a party’s consent, including stored electronic messages. Head of an element of the intelligence community: the leader of an intelligence part or the leader of the agency that contains it. United States person: has the meaning given in section 1801. Each leader of an intelligence element must create procedures, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence and approved by the Attorney General, within 2 years after December 19, 2014. The rules must cover intelligence collection that is likely to capture a covered communication to or from a United States person when no court order or similar legal process applies. They must allow collecting, keeping, and sharing those communications but they must not be kept longer than 5 years unless one of several exceptions applies: the message is used for foreign or counterintelligence; it is believed to be evidence of a crime and held by law enforcement; it is encrypted or likely secret; all parties are non‑United States persons; it is needed to stop an imminent threat to life (in which case Congress is told within 30 days); it is needed for technical or legal compliance (access reported yearly to Congress); or the element head approves longer retention for national security and sends a written certification saying why, how long, what is kept, and how privacy will be protected.