A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to the director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, asking for more information on the government’s surveillance programmes to be revealed.
The Guardian reported that, in their letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data.
The news agency revealed the senator’s letter which said: "We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the Patriot Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law," they say.
The group of senators added: "The recent public disclosures of secret government surveillance programs have exposed how secret interpretations of the USA Patriot Act have allowed for the bulk collection of massive amounts of data on the communications of ordinary Americans with no connection to wrongdoing.
"Reliance on secret law to conduct domestic surveillance activities raises serious civil liberty concerns and all but removes the public from an informed national security and civil liberty debate."
The senators said they were seeking public answers in order to give the Americans the information they need to conduct.
The US surveillance programmes taps phones and collects information about phone numbers dialled by a particular user, duration of the phone calls and also the device numbers.
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