WH on NSA snooping: You can totally trust us.

[DinoDoc]

White House defends collecting phone records

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats."

While defending the practice, a senior Obama administration official did not confirm a newspaper report that the NSA has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order.

The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.

The newspaper said the document, a copy of which it had obtained, shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press could not authenticate the order because documents from the court are classified.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to publicly discuss classified matters.

Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment. The NSA had no immediate comment.

Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn't specify which type of phone customers' records were being tracked.

Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.

The administration official said, "On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls."

The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial.

The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls," The Guardian said.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the USA Patriot Act.

Why did they have to issue such a wide ranging request for data? Because #### you that's why!

 

[Goodfella]

Great. I guess I never really liked privacy anyways.

Spoiler :

 

[Murky]

You think that NSA snooping is bad? There are a lot of private companies do that IT monitoring. Some have you sign a release acknowledging that nothing done while at work is private. Your emails and anything you send over the network is tracked. Essentially, anything that goes over their networks that can be monitored is fair game.

 

[peter grimes]

it's important to note - though strangely absent from the OP's article - that this is NOT a new program. This leaked authorization was for a continuing renewal.

*I can't find evidence for this, so please remain skeptical. I heard it on an interview with Glenn Greenwald 30 mintues ago on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

it's important to note - though strangely absent from the OP's article - that this is NOT a new program. This leaked authorization was for a continuing renewal.

*I can't find evidence for this, so please remain skeptical. I heard it on an interview with Glenn Greenwald 30 mintues ago on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show.

The justification/program for it was established in a 2001 provision in the PATRIOT Act, but we don't really have any records of it being this prevalent and non-discriminatory.

 

[DinoDoc]

The justification/program for it was established in a 2001 provision in the PATRIOT Act, but we don't really have any records of it being this prevalent and non-discriminatory.

The Patriot Act requires that the the record being turned over belong to individuals under some sort of suspicion in specific investigations:

The order is based on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows law enforcement to obtain a wide variety of “business records,” including calling records. EFF has long criticized Section 215, which sets a threshold for obtaining records much lower than the “probable cause” standard required to get a search warrant.

But Cohn argues that the kind of dragnet surveillance suggested by the Verizon order exceeds even the authority granted by the Patriot Act. “Section 215 is written as if they’re going after individual people based on individual investigations,” she says. In contrast, the order leaked to the Guardian affects “millions and millions of innocent people. There’s no way all of our calling records are relevant to a terrorism investigation.”

“I don’t think Congress thought it was authorizing dragnet surveillance” when it passed the Patriot Act, Cohn says. “I don’t think Americans think that’s OK. I would be shocked if the majority of congressmen thought it’s okay.”

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

There's an interview at Democracy Now! (Transcript isn't complete), but some good tidbits:

A leaked court order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers.

The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on an "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers, along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the contents of the communications.

We’re joined by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and two former National Security Agency employees turned whistleblowers: Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating The Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. "Where has the mainstream media been? These are routine orders, nothing new," Drake says. "What’s new is we’re seeing an actual order and people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time it was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records from any company."

Binney, who worked at nearly 40 years at the NSA and resigned shortly after the 9/11 attacks, says: “NSA has been doing all this stuff all along and it’s been all the companies not just one. And I basically looked at that and said if Verizon got one, so did everybody else. Which means that, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information of all U.S. citizens.”

Senator Ron Wyden wrote to Holder just recently that “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” I would suspect this has been the norm since 9/11.

 

[JollyRoger]

I thought this was a bump of a thread from 2003 or so.

 

[DinoDoc]

I thought this was a bump of a thread from 2003 or so.

The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.

 

[JollyRoger]

Oh yeah, I forgot - the Bush era use of the phone companies for broad eavesdropping was warrantless. I guess we are making baby steps here in actually getting warrants. Congress even gave the phone companies immunity for participating in such a warrantless scheme.

Anyway, given past experience here, be prepared for righties to come in this thread to proclaim that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. If that happens, make it a sport and ask them to post their bank account numbers, social security number, and other such personal information. The sputtering response to that will be somewhat entertaining.

 

[DinoDoc]

Oh yeah, I forgot - the Bush era use of the phone companies for broad eavesdropping was warrantless. I guess we are making baby steps here in actually getting warrants. Congress even gave the phone companies immunity for participating in such a warrantless scheme.

[YOUTUBE-OLD]B6fnfVJzZT4[/YOUTUBE-OLD]

 

[Formaldehyde]

it's important to note - though strangely absent from the OP's article - that this is NOT a new program. This leaked authorization was for a continuing renewal.

Senator Ron Wyden wrote to Holder just recently that “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” I would suspect this has been the norm since 9/11.

I thought this was a bump of a thread from 2003 or so.

I'm still trying to figure out how this could possibly be news to anybody. Where have they been for the past 10 years?

The world supposedly changed after 9/11 when we gave up many of our basic rights and liberties for supposed enhanced security, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin. Obama is merely continuing the policies set long ago.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Years ago when all this was still against the law, didn't we have the British spy on our phone conversations and we spied on theirs, and whenever a person of interest came up we'd ask our ally to give us their phone record?

Or is that a myth?

 

[JollyRoger]

[YOUTUBE-OLD]B6fnfVJzZT4[/YOUTUBE-OLD]

Yeah, he is getting a warrant to break some of his promises - but that involves two branches of government instead of one. It's not like I approve, but please don't pretend this is anything new (except for the getting a warrant part).

 

[peter grimes]

Years ago when all this was still against the law, didn't we have the British spy on our phone conversations and we spied on theirs, and whenever a person of interest came up we'd ask our ally to give us their phone record?

Or is that a myth?

I heard the same thing. Confirmed. Must be true

 

[warpus]

That's some scary crap. They shouldn't be able to do without a case-by-case warrant.

 

[JollyRoger]

Given the logic fed to us in the Holder/AP thread, if you have a warrant issued to obtain information from you, that means you are being prosecuted. I guess I should expect to be arrested any day now.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I heard the same thing. Confirmed. Must be true

How did the Russians know so much about Tamerlan Tsarnaev while he was living in the US? Apparently, the only people who don't have access to information which is supposed to be private and sensitive are the common citizens.

 

[DinoDoc]

Yeah, he is getting a warrant to break some of his promises - but that involves two branches of government instead of one. It's not like I approve, but please don't pretend this is anything new (except for the getting a warrant part).

Based on the posting thus far, it seems the WH is right. It seems people will totally trust them to only do nice things with this power and not be evil and underhanded like the previous admin was when they did the same things the current admin was once critical of. All this in spite of the fact the law this order was based on a) doesn't allow for a broad based dragnet and b) requires a slightly better reason why the government should get the records than #### you that's why.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Do you have any idea how the Republicans in Congress would respond if Obama didn't keep up the same heavy-handed tactics they overtly and covertly approved long ago?