WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency apparently compensated e-mail service providers "millions of dollars" for costs they incurred in the fallout from an October 2011 court ruling that an unrelated aspect of the agency's surveillance operations violated the Constitution, according to a newly disclosed document.
The document — a brief article in a secret internal agency newsletter, dated October 2012, that was leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and published by The Guardian on Friday — added a detail to the emerging public understanding of the once-secret episode, but it also raised new questions.
Meanwhile, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the N.S.A. inspector general's office had briefed Congress this week that there had been "roughly one case per year" over the past decade in which an agency official had willfully broken surveillance rules to gather information inappropriately, and that "disciplinary action has been taken."
Mrs. Feinstein, who was responding to reporting by Bloomberg News, also said that none of the cases involved the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the law that regulates surveillance activities conducted on American soil — and "in most instances did not involve an American's information."
She portrayed the abuses as "isolated" — although unacceptable — episodes that did not change her view that the N.S.A. had an oversight system that worked, despite the problems.
The N.S.A. newsletter mentioning millions of dollars in costs stemming from the October 2011 ruling announced the smooth completion last fall of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's annual recertification of certain N.S.A. procedures. (The Obama administration declassified the court ruling on Wednesday.)
The procedures involve how the agency carries out eavesdropping operations without warrants on domestic soil, but aimed at foreigners abroad, under a 2008 law called the FISA Amendments Act. The effort has two parts: one called Prism, which the N.S.A. uses to collect messages from e-mail providers like Google, and an "upstream" collection from networks operated by companies like Verizon. The entire effort collects about 250 million communications a year, the 2011 court ruling said.
The successful recertification contrasted with the one in October 2011, the newsletter said, when Judge John D. Bates of the surveillance court ruled that the N.S.A.'s upstream operations, which were also collecting tens of thousands of purely domestic e-mails for a technical reason, violated the Constitution. As a result, the N.S.A. had worked out new procedures for handling such messages, resulting in months of delays.
"Last year's problems resulted in multiple extensions to the Certifications' expiration dates which cost millions of dollars for Prism providers to implement each successive extension, costs covered" by the N.S.A., the newsletter said.
It is not remarkable that the government paid the companies for their costs. In the 2008 law, Congress required compensation "at the prevailing rate" to electronic communications service firms for "providing information, facilities or assistance" in complying with surveillance directives.
But it is not clear why Prism providers would incur significant extra costs for the mere extension of the expiration date for the older set of procedures already in use — especially when the problem leading to the delays in approving new certifications involved an issue only on the upstream surveillance operation.
An earlier internal N.S.A. newsletter leaked by Mr. Snowden, and made public last week by The Washington Post, appeared to conflict with the October 2012 newsletter. The earlier document, written shortly after Judge Bates's ruling in October 2011, said that Prism was not affected by his decision to allow the upstream collection to continue only for a month if the problems were not fixed. Most Prism companies had already been "transitioned" to new annual certificates, it said, with the last two — Google and Yahoo — expected to complete that step soon.
Both the N.S.A. and several tech companies declined to explain the apparent discrepancy about whether the extensions and delays affected e-mail companies involved in the Prism program, nor — assuming they did — say why the costs would be significant.
Google has rejected reports that it knowingly participates in Prism. It has asked the government for permission to say more about how they provide personal data about foreign users in response to surveillance court orders.
In a statement on Friday, Google reiterated that it has "not joined Prism or any government surveillance programs" and said it wanted to say more to the public. But it declined to answer questions about the fall 2011 episode.
Yahoo also declined to answer specific questions about how recertification works, saying only: "Federal law requires the U.S. government to reimburse providers for costs incurred to respond to compulsory legal process imposed by the government. We have requested reimbursement consistent with this law."
The Guardian has been under pressure from the British government over its handling of secret documents, especially those pertaining to the N.S.A.'s relationship with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, or G.C.H.Q. The paper said this week that G.C.H.Q. officials had come to its London office last month to oversee the destruction of computers said to contain copies of files leaked by Mr. Snowden.
BuzzFeed reported Friday that The Guardian had shared with The New York Times a subset of the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden involving the British agency. Both The Guardian and The Times confirmed the report, with The Guardian saying that it had struck the partnership in part because the First Amendment provided greater press freedoms than those available in Britain.
The Times's executive editor, Jill Abramson, said: "We don't usually comment on our reporting before publication, but in this case we will make an exception since it is already public. The Times is reporting on material from The Guardian as well as other matters related to Edward Snowden."
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