Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote to the NSA asking if the agency collects the telephone records of members of Congress, and CNN received a response claiming that they do collect congressmen’s phone records because “Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.” In other words, congressmen have no privacy from the prying eyes of the NSA either.
Sanders wrote to NSA Director General Keith Alexander on January 3:
I am writing today to ask you one very simple question. Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials? “Spying” would include gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business.
The NSA responded by asserting that they collect all of the information related to telephone calls of members of Congress just like they collect information on the telephone habits of every other American. “NSA’s authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of U.S. persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons,” the NSA told CNN on January 4.