NSA admits it put phone numbers on an 'alert list'

By DAVID G. SAVAGE | Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON-The National Security Agency admitted in documents released Tuesday that it had wrongly put 16,000 phone numbers on an "alert list" so their incoming calls could be monitored, a mistake that a judge on the secret surveillance court called a "flagrant violation" of the law.

The documents are the latest to show that not only did the secret spy agency collect more data than most Americans suspected, its agents sometimes went too far when tapping into the data.