Thu Aug 22, 2013 AT 6:00 AM EDT
The nation’s top intelligence official declassified three secret U.S. court opinions showing how the NSA scooped up as many as 56,000 emails annually over three years and other communications by Americans with no connection to terrorism, how it revealed the error to the court and changed how it gathered Internet communications, the AP reports. The NY Times reports the FISA court found the NSA had violated the Constitution for “several years” and had a pattern of “misrepresentation” to the Court. According to NBC News, the NSA’s surveillance network has the capacity to reach around 75 percent of all U.S. Internet communications in the hunt for foreign intelligence. Citing current and former NSA officials for the 75 percent figure, the Wall Street Journal reported that the agency can observe more of Americans’ online communications than officials have publicly acknowledged.