Newly released documents show the National Security Agency violated phone-records rules . The alert list started with about 4,000 numbers and ended up with 17,835 , most of which did not have the required suspicion , officials say . Papers : The Guardian and Washington Post reveal that NSA analysts were able to access data from millions of Verizon phone calls in a single day without any court orders or warrants. The papers were released to comply with ACLU , Electronic Frontier Foundation requests . The court required the NSA to seek approval to query data until processes were improved .
Newly released documents show the National Security Agency violated phone-records rules . Papers : The Guardian and Washington Post reveal that NSA analysts were able to access data from millions of Verizon phone calls in a single day without any court orders or warrants. The papers were released to comply with ACLU , Electronic Frontier Foundation requests . The court required the NSA to seek approval to query data until processes were improved .