NSA collected 56,000 US emails a year

The National Security Agency may have unintentionally collected as many as 56,000 emails of Americans per year between 2008 and 2011, in a program that a secret US court said may have violated US law and the Constitution.

The once-classified documents were released by US intelligence agencies as part of an unprecedented White House effort to smooth the uproar following revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden about the extent of secret government surveillance programs.