Documents Shed New Light on NSA Data Gathering

The Obama administration declassified and released documents Wednesday that described past violations of a secret court order by National Security Agency programs set up to amass records on phone calls and Internet transactions.

The violations weren't detailed in the three documents, but raised new concerns about the sweeping surveillance operations and opened the administration to new criticism from advocates of stricter limits.

The documents also posed questions about why the NSA closed one of the programs, to collect so-called metadata on email and other Internet communications. A 2011 document called...