Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and socialist, asked army general Keith Alexander, the NSA’s outgoing director, if the NSA “has spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”.
Sanders, in a letter dated 3 January, defined “spying” as “gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business”.
The NSA collects the records of every phone call made and received inside the United States on an ongoing, daily basis, a revelation first published in the Guardian in June based on leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Until 2011, the NSA collected the email and internet records of all Americans as well.
In response, the NSA has argued that surveillance does not occur when it acquires the voluminous amount of phone data, but rather when its analysts examine those phone records, which they must only do, pursuant to the secret court orders justifying the collection, when they have “reasonable articulable suspicion” of a connection to specific terrorist groups. Declassified rulings of the secret surveillance court known as the Fisa court documented “systemic” violations of those restrictions over the years.
Sanders’ office suggested the senator, who called the collection “clearly unconstitutional” in his letter, did consider the distinction salient.
Asked if Sanders meant the collection of legislators’ and officials’ phone data alongside every other American’s or the deliberate targeting of those officials by the powerful intelligence agency, spokesman Jeff Frank said: “He’s referring to either one.”
The NSA did not immediately return a request for comment. Hours after Sanders sent his letter, the office of the director of national intelligence announced that the Fisa court on Friday renewed the domestic phone records bulk collection for another 90 days.
Sanders’ question is a political minefield for the NSA, and one laid as Congress is about to reconvene for the new year. Among its agenda items is a bipartisan, bicameral bill that seeks to abolish the NSA’s ability to collect data in bulk on Americans or inside the United States without suspicion of a crime or a threat to national security. Acknowledgement that it has collected the communications records of American lawmakers and other officials is likely to make it harder for the NSA to argue that it needs such broad collection powers to defend against terrorism.
Civil liberties and tech groups are planning a renewed lobbying push to pass the bill, called the USA Freedom Act, as they hope to capitalize on a White House review panel that last month recommended the NSA no longer collect so-called metadata, but rely on phone companies to store customer data for up to two years, which is longer than they currently store it.
No comments:
Post a Comment