And even if people do fight, courts often side with intelligence agencies who say they want to protect national security, Weismann said.
Last fiscal year, the NSA spent close to $4.8 million processing FOIA requests, appeals and dealing with litigation in connection with the requests. However, Phillips said, because of sequester cuts the agency spent less money last fiscal year than in previous ones.
Some requests simply state that a person wants any and all information the NSA has about them. Others, however, go into detail and ask for specifics about how the NSA is run, how its surveillance program works as well as how the NSA has gone about collecting information.
While the NSA is hearing mostly from the public, journalists and civil rights organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center are also digging, Phillips said.
Her 19-person staff is grappling to deal with the boom in requests, she said. More than 900 are still pending, although the NSA tries to get back to people in the 20 days required by law, she said.
Sometimes it can take months, even years, to get a response.
Even after a long wait, the agency for the most part is sharing nothing about the topic people want the most information about.
That frustrates Weismann.
“They can monitor in the most sophisticated way, and they say they are getting overwhelmed. I think that’s facially ludicrous,” she said.
Meanwhile, Phillips said her staff doesn’t do searches on the majority of requests.