NSA Official Positively Compares Metadata Searches To Stop And Frisk

from the an-apt-comparison,-but-hardly-in-the-way-he-means-it dept

There's a huge disconnect between the mindset of the intelligence community and everyone else outside it. Considering the majority still lies with those on the outside, you'd think they'd make more of an effort to connect. But, as this statement, made to the PCLOB (Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board), indicates the gap hasn't narrowed in the slightest.

Employees at the National Security Agency follow the same standards as controversial "stop and frisk" policies when accessing phone surveillance data, intelligence officials said Tuesday.

Though the agency collects data about all U.S. phone calls, NSA employees need to demonstrate “reasonable and articulable suspicion” when they want to access that phone call data.

"It’s effectively the same standard as stop and frisk,” NSA General Counsel Rajesh De said during a hearing held by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which supervises anti-terrorism surveillance programs.

It simply cannot be stressed enough that you need to choose your words wisely when discussing programs that are already suspected of violating civil liberties. Comparing them to something just as controversial only calls the programs into further question, not to mention Rajesh De's judgement.

A board member called De out on this, pointing out the NYPD's program is hardly without its problems, seeing as it's currently the subject of multiple lawsuits including two high-profile cases in federal courts. Having been apprised of developments outside the intelligence bubble, the officials "amended their claim," so to speak.

The intelligence officials defended their version of the process, saying that searches of the phone call database are subject to more oversight than police officers who stop and frisk people on the street.

Well, one would hope so, considering the particular "cops on the street" Rajash De compared NSA analysts to have had very little oversight over their program, which simply requires an officer to fill out a small form and check some boxes ("furtive movement") in order to justify shoving someone up against the wall.

As it stands now (especially with the City's stay being granted), stop and frisk hardly even needs "reasonable suspicion." Supposedly the NSA does, but again, we're expected to take officials' word on this, and any references De (or anyone else) makes towards "oversight" should probably be ignored. "Oversight" is the ideal, not the reality. The same goes for the NYPD, which has been granted (like the NSA) an extremely long leash by indulgent overseers (Mayor Bloomberg/intelligence committees).

DNI counsel Robert Litt added that the "actual degree of intrusion" when the agency searches the (not officially a) collection is much less than that of a stop and frisk search. Well, I would hope so. For one thing, no one's pockets are being turned out or having their crotch region manhandled. If they were, there'd be a whole lot fewer unnoticed privacy violations, much to the chagrin of Mike Rogers.

Filed Under: metadata, nsa, nsa surveillance, pclob, rajesh de, stop and frisk

The PCLOB Inadvertently Opts For Total Transparency While The Surveillance Review Board Sets A Troubling Tone In Its Debut

from the moving-recklessly-at-the-speed-of-government dept

If the endgame is transparency, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board seems to have set the tone early, if inadvertently. Al Kamen at the Washington Post quickly runs down a story all too familiar to many, many others who have wondered (too late) what the difference between Cc and Bcc actually is.

[W]e were delighted to get an invitation to the board’s Oct. 4 public hearing at the Mayflower Hotel, where executive and judicial branch officials are to discuss changes to federal intelligence surveillance programs in order to adequately “protect privacy and civil liberties.”

Even better to see that the e-mailed invite displayed the e-mail addresses of the hundred or so recipients. Of course most addresses were those of media colleagues and, by definition, pretty useless.

But there were some we were happy to have, especially those for staff at the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the FBI, Justice Department, Treasury and the Pentagon. Sure saves time.

Exposing email addresses? All part of a day's work in the national security complex. That it was an outside board doing the exposing is a little disappointing, but on the bright side, many journalists now have a useful list of email addresses that will help them bypass flacks in the Communications offices.

As for the other, less independent, surveillance-related board? The first meeting with the members of the Surveillance Review Board was actually two meetings -- one for tech firm reps and one for privacy advocate groups like the People's Front of Judea ACLU and EPIC.

The meeting with the tech firm reps was held in the White House's Truman Room, and went down something like this, according to Spencer Ackerman:

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo sent representatives to the inaugural hearing, chaired by Swire. Also in attendance were Alan Davidson of MIT; Atkinson; and Meinrath. There was also representatives of the Information Technology Industry Council, Rackspace, and the Software and Information Industry Association...

The meeting itself struck Meinrath as bizarre. Representatives from the technology firms were identified around the table not by their names, but by placards listing their employers. There was minimal technical discussion of surveillance mechanisms despite the presence of technology companies; Meinrath took the representatives to be lawyers, not technologists.

When it appeared like the meeting would discuss a surveillance issue in a sophisticated way, participants and commissioners suggested it be done in a classified meeting. Meinrath interpreted that as a maneuver to exclude his more-critical viewpoint.

So, essentially pointless. Many of the tech companies are currently engaged in legal battles in hopes of making reporting on government requests for data more transparent. Others, like Microsoft, have been more cooperative with the NSA's requests in the past, but seem a bit more hesitant to do so in the future.

Meinrath's assessment of the tech meeting is pretty damning.

Meinrath said he was surprised by the circumscribed discussion: "I didn't find anyone saying the bulk surveillance is horrendous and bad for our democracy." He declined to discuss specifics. "The companies are concerned that it impacts their bottom line. My concern is they're looking to preserve the function of the NSA," Meinrath said.

Asked if that was the perspective of the government or the companies, Meinrath replied: "I'm not sure you can separate the two."

Granted, this was the first set of meetings by the Surveillance Review Board, but based on what was observed here, it appears Meinrath's initial feeling that these administration moves will amount to nothing more than a "simulacrum of meaningful reform" is spot on.

This feeling isn't alleviated at all by the details of the second meeting.

One group included civil libertarian organizations such as the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. It met in a conference room on K and 20th Streets. Morrell and Clarke did not attend.

That's right. The civil libertarians weren't even allowed into the White House, much less given a chance to speak to the entire board. This would seem to indicate that the Board (which operates at the behest of the administration and reports to the Director of National Intelligence) believes tech companies require full attention while safeguarding constitutional rights should be granted no more than half-measures. It would also appear that the government's main concern is winning over the tech companies in order to continue the bulk surveillance unimpeded. The concerns of the public were relegated to a separate, underattended conference room blocks away from the White House.

Finally, there's no escaping the fact that any efforts towards reforming the surveillance system will still be routed through James Clapper. Much like every corporate participant, the administration had no comment.

The White House deferred comment to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which did not respond.

So, a pair of inauspicious moments for two groups ostensibly aimed at achieving the near-mythical "balance" between security and privacy. If anything's going to be achieved, the Surveillance Review Board will have to start viewing the rights of Americans as equally important as the opinions of tech companies.

Filed Under: nsa surveillance, pclob, surveillance review board, transparency

Former FISC Judge Quit Over Warrantless Wiretapping, Now Argues FISC Is Out Of Control

from the needs-an-adversary dept

Last year, we noted that after five years of nothingness, despite what the law required, the federal government finally had a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), after years of nominations that went nowhere. The PCLOB does now exist and has been charged with looking into the government's surveillance efforts. While the PCLOB does have some really good members who are strong privacy/civil liberties advocates, there are significant questions about how much authority it actually has. Still, on Tuesday, the PCLOB held hearings on the ongoing surveillance programs, and perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of them were the comments from James Robertson, a former FISC judge, who had quit the court, but had not spoken publicly about why until now.

Specifically, he claims that he quit because of revelations about the Bush administration using warrantless wiretapping and going around the court's approval process.

Robertson said he asked to join the FISA court "to see what it was up to," had previously played a central role in national security law. He was the judge who ruled against the Bush administration in the landmark Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case, which granted inmates at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detentions. That ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.

Robertson quit the FISA court in 2005, days after the New York Times revealed widespread NSA warrantless wiretapping under President George W. Bush's administration. Robertson had previously refused to explain his decision. But during a break in the hearing Tuesday he confirmed for the first time to the AP that he had "resigned in protest because the Bush administration was bypassing the court on warrantless wiretaps."

Robertson argued that the "rubber stamp" claims about the FISA Court were inaccurate, saying that they left out the fact that FISC frequently pushed back on requests, requiring changes from the government, which were not seen in the overall stats on requests "approved" by the court. That said, he notes that the approval/disapproval of warrants was supposed to be all that FISC was about -- but since the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the role of FISC has changed entirely, from a narrowly focused court approving specific warrants to what is effectively a judicially run administrative agency designed to approve entire surveillance programs:

But he warned that Congress' 2008 reform of the FISA system expanded the government's authority by forcing the court to approve entire surveillance systems, not just surveillance warrants, as it previously handled. Under the FISA changes, "the court is now approving programmatic surveillance. I don't think that is a judicial function," he said.

Robertson said he was "frankly stunned" by a recent Times report that FISA court rulings had created a new body of law broadening the ability of the NSA to use its surveillance programs to target not only terrorists but suspects in cases involving espionage, cyberattacks and weapons of mass destruction.

This is a really key point that has not received nearly enough attention. Under the old rules, the FISC would look at specific warrants and approve or (rarely) refuse to approve those warrants. But now it basically is issuing a blanket "approval" of methods and techniques, such as the infamous dragnet of all information on all phone calls from various telcos. That's a really different function.

Furthermore, Robertson highlighted what many of us have been saying all along: when you have a secret court that only hears one side of a case, it should be no surprise that the court keeps pushing further and further in the direction of the single party (the government) that presents information before it. Robertson's suggestion to try to fix this is to somehow come up with an adversarial process -- whether it's (for example) someone from a public interest group, such as the ACLU, or someone appointed by the PCLOB itself, to act as an advocate for those on the other side of the government's surveillance desires.

Filed Under: adversarial hearings, civil liberties, fisa court, fisc, james robertson, pclob, privacy, warrantless wiretapping