US intelligence officials sent Congress a document over the weekend in regards to recently discovered PRISM mass surveillance program. The Senate Intelligence Committee made the document public in an attempt to explain the massive government data collection program which was recently uncovered.

According to the Associated Press, the intelligence officials hope to “show Americans the value of the program.” As such, they’ve clearly outlined that the program obtained through what we now know as PRISM, helped agencies prevent terrorist plots in more than 20 different countries. In addition, the phone metadata that was so openly discussed in another leak, was only searched less than 300 times within the database. Furthermore, the metadata records can only be examined for “suspected connections to terrorism.” In case you’re wondering, those records contain information like call times, and duration.

Information collected through PRISM must be deleted after five years, and the programs are reviewed every 90 days by a secret court. The court proceedings are apparently authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

For more information on the situation be sure to check out the source link below.

[via Associated Press]