§1846 Congressional Oversight

Summary

The Attorney General must, every six months, fully tell the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Judiciary Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee about all uses of pen registers and trap and trace devices under this law. The Attorney General must also give those committees a report covering the past six months. The report must show totals for: applications for orders; orders granted, modified, or denied; devices authorized on an emergency basis under section 1843 and the number of later orders on those devices; which departments or agencies filed applications; the same totals broken down by each department or agency; and a good-faith estimate of how many subjects were targeted, rounded to the nearest 500, including how many were United States persons (reported in 500-person bands starting with 0–499) and, of those U.S. persons, how many had their acquired information reviewed or accessed by a Federal officer, employee, or agent (also in 500-person bands). Each report must be unclassified to the extent national security allows. Within 7 days after sending the report to the committees, the Attorney General must make it public or, if national security prevents that, publish an unclassified summary or a redacted version.