The NSA won't tell Congress how many Americans it's spying on because our democracy is broken

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/22/11490278/nsa-congress-prism-702-spying-democracy-broken

Congress is trying to learn more about the NSA's surveillance programs, and it's not going well. In a letter delivered today to director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a group of 14 legislators (eight Democrats and six Republicans) asked for a ballpark figure on how many Americans are having their data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Section 702 is the legal justification for many of the NSA's most invasive programs, including PRISM. But we still don't have an exact idea of how broad its reach is. So Congress asked! They passed FISA, after all, so it's only right that they should know how it's being used. They don't need an exact number of Americans caught up in PRISM, just a ballpark. Is it a thousand? A hundred thousand? 318 million? Take an educated guess.

 They've wanted that guess for a while now. Even before Snowden, members of Congress were asking for details on how 702 was being used, but it's gone on for five years now and the NSA has not responded in any way. So today, they asked some more!