NSA's internal watchdog defends privacy practices

The U.S. National Security Agency takes multiple steps to protect the privacy of the information it collects about U.S. residents under a secretive surveillance program, according to a report from the agency's privacy office.

Surveillance under presidential Executive Order 12333, which dates back to 1981, generally sets the ground rules for the NSA's overseas surveillance. It allows the agency to keep the content of U.S. citizens' communications if they are collected "incidentally" while the agency is targeting overseas communications.

But the surveillance of U.S. residents is conducted with several privacy safeguards in place, ensuring that the NSA collects the right information from the right targets and does not share the collected information inappropriately, according to the NSA Civil Liberties and Privacy Office report, released Tuesday.