WASHINGTON: The bulk telephone data collection by a US intelligence agency is a massive violation of civil liberties and should be shut down, a government advisory panel said yesterday.
A report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a panel created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, concluded the National Security Agency’s huge phone metadata programme is illegal in several ways, and provides little or no value to the fight against terrorism.
The panel’s 238-page report said the programme “has shown minimal value in safeguarding the nation from terrorism.”
“Based on the information provided to the board, including classified briefings and documentation, we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” the report said.
And the panel said the program is not authorized by Patriot Act, the law passed following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
It said the programme violates constitutional guarantees of free speech and protection against unreasonable searches, and also fails to comply with a federal privacy law.
Moreover, it said the programme threatens to have “debilitating consequences for journalism” because “sources in a position to offer crucial information about newsworthy topics may remain silent out of fear that their telephone records could be used to trace their contacts.”
“The Section 215 bulk telephone records programme lacks a viable legal foundation... implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said.
“As a result, the board recommends that the government end the programme.” The report said the NSA also stretches the interpretation of what may be “relevant” to a terrorism investigation.
“The government has argued... that essentially the entire nation’s calling records are ‘relevant’ to every counterterrorism investigation,” it said.
“The implication of this reasoning is that if the government develops an effective means of searching through everything in order to find something, then everything becomes relevant to its investigations. The word ‘relevant’ becomes limited only by the government’s technological capacity to ingest information and sift through it efficiently.”
But the five-member board, which began work in 2012, years after Congress called for its creation, split in its conclusions. Two members said they disagreed on the legal authority for the programme.
Board member Rachel Brand wrote in her dissent that “I cannot join the board’s analysis or conclusions” that the NSA program is illegal, and said that if the US is hit with another large-scale terrorist attack, “the public will engage in recriminations against the Intelligence Community for failure to prevent it.”
The other dissenter, Elisebeth Collins Cook, said the programme “should be modified,” but that “I do not believe it lacks statutory authorisation or must be shut down.... I disagree with the board’s analysis of the efficacy of the programme.”
Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the report, saying the panel correctly concluded that the NSA’s call-records dragnet “is illegal and ineffective and presents a serious threat to civil liberties”.
Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International USA said the report “should be the final nail in the coffin for the bulk collection of US telephony metadata under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Congress should move to end the programme”. AFP
