Senate creating secret encyclopedia of US spy programs

WASHINGTON (AP) - Trying to get a handle on hundreds of sensitive, closely held surveillance programs, a Senate committee is compiling a secret encyclopedia of American intelligence collection. It's part of an effort to improve congressional oversight of the government's sprawling global spying effort.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein launched the review in October 2013, after a leak by former National Security Agency systems administrator Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone. Four months earlier, Snowden had revealed the existence of other programs that vacuumed up Americans' and foreigners' phone call records and electronic communications.

"We're trying right now to look at every intelligence program," Feinstein told the Associated Press. "There are hundreds of programs we have found ... sprinkled all over. Many people in the departments don't even know (they) are going on."

Feinstein and other lawmakers say they were fully briefed about the most controversial programs leaked by Snowden, the NSA's collection of American phone records and the agency's access to U.S. tech company accounts in targeting foreigners through its PRISM program. Those programs are conducted under acts of Congress, supervised by a secret federal court.

But when it comes to surveillance under Executive Order 12333, which authorizes foreign intelligence collection overseas without a court order, there are so many programs that even the executive branch has trouble keeping track of them, Feinstein said. Many are so sensitive that only a handful of people are authorized to know the details, which complicates the management challenge.

Lawmakers who serve on the intelligence committee sometimes have difficulty making sense of the information they receive, some of which can't be shared even with some of their own staff.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has joked that only one entity in the universe has complete visibility over all the U.S. government's secret intelligence programs - "That's God."