SurveillanceSenate panel’s NSA curbs not enough: critics
Yesterday, the Senate’s intelligence committee approved by an 11-4, and released the text of, a bill which would scale back the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records, increase congressional and judicial oversight of intelligence activities, and create 10-year prison sentences for people who access the classified material without authorization. Critics of U.S. surveillance programs and privacy rights advocates said the bill does little, if anything, to end the daily collection of millions of records that has spurred widespread demands for reform.
Yesterday, the Senate’s intelligence committee approved by an 11-4, and released the text of, a bill which would scale back the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records, increase congressional and judicial oversight of intelligence activities, and create 10-year prison sentences for people who access the classified material without authorization.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) said the measure would ban bulk collection of records “under specific procedures and restrictions.” Chambliss spokeswoman Lauren Claffey said some of the telephone metadata collection would continue, so long as intelligence officials followed rules for how it can be used.
The bill would allow only certain people to have access to the phone data. It also would bar the NSA from obtaining the content of the phone calls. The current program only allows the NSA to collect phone numbers and times of calls and cannot listen in on phone calls without a warrant from a secret court.
“The threats we face — from terrorism, proliferation and cyberattack, among others — are real, and they will continue,” Feinstein said in the statement. “Intelligence is necessary to protect our national and economic security, as well as to stop attacks against our friends and allies around the world.”
She also said that “more can and should be done” to increase transparency of the surveillance and build public support for privacy protections.
Critics of U.S. surveillance programs and privacy rights advocates said the bill does little, if anything, to end the daily collection of millions of records that has spurred widespread demands for reform.
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, noted that in a nod to the public’s concerns about the breadth of the NSA’s surveillance powers, the bill includes modest measures to increase transparency and oversight, such as new public reporting requirements and greater involvement by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. At its core, however, the bill endorses the most controversial of the NSA’s recently reported activities: the bulk collection of Americans’ domestic and international telephone call records.
Goitein said the stage is now set for a showdown between the intelligence committee’s bill and the USA FREEDOM Act, a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) which would prohibit bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records.
“The intelligence committee bill and the USA Freedom Act present two opposing visions of the relationship between law-abiding Americans and the national security state,” said Goitein.
“The fundamental question is: should the government have some reason to suspect wrongdoing before sweeping up Americans’ most personal information to feed into its databases? Leahy and Sensenbrenner say yes; Feinstein says no.”
