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 Eight Democrats and six Republicans made the request to Director
of National Intelligence James Clapper in a letter seen by Reuters
on Friday, reflecting the continued bipartisan concerns over the
scope of U.S. data espionage.
"You have willingly shared information with us about the important
and actionable intelligence obtained under these surveillance
programs," wrote the lawmakers, all members of the U.S. House of
Representatives' Judiciary Committee.
"Now we require your assistance in making a determination that the
privacy protections in place are functioning as designed."
They requested that Clapper provide the information about data
collected under a statute, known as Section 702, by May 6.
 That law, set to expire at the end of 2017, enables an Internet
surveillance program called Prism that was first disclosed in a
series of leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden some three years ago.
Prism gathers messaging data from Alphabet's Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Apple and other major tech companies that is sent to and
from a foreign target under surveillance.
Intelligence officials say data about Americans are "incidentally"
collected during communication with a target reasonably believed to
be living overseas. Critics see it as "back-door" surveillance on
Americans without a warrant.
A recently declassified November opinion from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secretive body that oversees the
legality of U.S. spy programs, rejected a constitutional challenge
to rules permitting the FBI to access foreign intelligence data for
use in domestic criminal investigations.
The Republican-controlled House has voted overwhelmingly since the
Snowden leaks to require U.S. agencies obtain a warrant before
searching collected foreign intelligence for data belonging to
Americans, but those proposals have gained minimal traction in the
Senate.
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Civil liberties groups and Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat,
have previously requested information on the extent of U.S. data
caught up in the foreign surveillance program.
The Obama administration, however, has said it cannot provide a
precise answer and that any estimate would require reviewing
communications in a manner that would raise privacy concerns.
In their letter to Clapper, the lawmakers said officials have
demonstrated the feasibility of providing an estimate and that any
one-time privacy concerns were acceptable in light of the importance
of the information.
James Sensenbrenner, Darrell Issa, Jim Jordan, Ted Poe, Jason
Chaffetz, and Blake Farenthold were the Republicans to sign the
letter. Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hank Johnson, Ted Deutch,
Cedric Richmond, Suzan DelBene, David Cicilline and John Conyers
signed for the Democrats. Conyers is the top Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Paul Simao)
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