The following rush transcript probably contains errors and/or omissions…
Bracing for Obama NSA Reform Letdown
January 16, 2014
I’m Rex Latchford, with another DayPage…
Money, Money, Money
President Obama is set to announce his “decision” on the NSA mess. Ahead of that, almost every group with input to the president’s decision-making process, has been critical of the NSA even as the president’s office has put out signals the changes are likely to be limited in scope. More on that in a moment.
First, let’s follow the money.
The $1.1tn budget bill passed the House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon by 359-67 votes, and is expected to become law after clearing the Senate as soon as Friday. A big chunk of that money is headed straight for the NSA -before- the President announces his “decisions” about the NSA. Could that have been a stalling tactic to ensure the NSA gets fully funded when public sentiment is strongly in favor of scaling back spying activities against American citizens?
Congress is calling on the National Security Agency to detail the effectiveness of its bulk data collection programmes. Congress will also outlaw certain types of domestic surveillance, using two little-noticed clauses included in its giant federal spending bill.
In a sign of pent-up reform pressure on Capitol Hill, two measures dealing with the NSA were quietly included in the 1,600-page spending text with relatively little fanfare – or opposition from the White House – and are likely to pave the way for more binding legislative efforts once President Barack Obama outlines his own response to the surveillance scandal on Friday.
The first, and more unexpected, of the two NSA budget measures directs the agency to reveal “the number of records acquired by the NSA as part of its bulk telephone metadata program” over a five-year period, and to turn the data over to the House and Senate judiciary committees within 90 days.
“This report shall provide, to the greatest extent possible, an estimate of the number of records of United States citizens that have been acquired by NSA as part of the bulk telephone metadata program and the number of such records that have been reviewed by NSA personnel in response to a query”, it demands.
It is also calls for more information on the question of how helpful such metadata has been in foiling terror plots, something that both NSA critics and Obama’s own review panel say has been GREATLY EXAGGERATED.
The report should be “UNCLASSIFIED to the greatest extent possible and with a classified annex if necessary, listing terrorist activities that were disrupted, in whole or in part, with the aid of information obtained through NSA’s telephone metadata program and whether this information could have been promptly obtained by other means”, says the budget text.
A separate NSA reform measure dealing with domestic surveillance is included in the main legislation text, and would carry more power to compel the NSA. It bars the agency from using any of the funding it gets from Congress to target US citizens for surveillance under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was intended, however, as a response to more radical reforms that have been proposed, and is likely to have relatively limited impact on the NSA’s ability to collect data on US citizens through incidental means, the so-called backdoor provisions, which was seen as a bigger threat as Snowden’s revelations continued. Politicians like back doors evem more than hackers do.
Some reformers in Congress were therefore concerned that inclusion of the clause in the spending bill could serve as a distraction, although one staffer involved in separate reform legislation said it was “helpful to keep the pressure up”. Asked about the budget provisions on Tuesday, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of them, but the White House later issued a letter urging passage of the spending bill and said the president would sign it into law.
Meanwhile, out in the REAL world, fears are growing that Pres. Obama will allow the NSA to keep bulk databases… A poll released this morning finds 59% of Americans oppose keeping the NSA’s widespread collection of data unchanged. Of the remainder, Twenty-six percent of respondents “strongly” oppose keeping NSA current surveillance in place. That skepticism of the NSA echoes concern voiced earlier this week by Geoffrey Stone, a law professor and member of Obama’s surveillance review panel, which recommended taking the bulk collection out of the hands of the NSA. “Government can do far more harm if it abuses information it has than private entities can,” Stone told the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday.
Civil libertarians, once hopeful that Obama would end the bulk collection of all records of calls made in the United States, are bracing for disappointment after a New York Times report suggested Obama would allow the NSA to maintain its sweeping databases when he makes his speech on Friday. But congressional critics are already gearing up for a fight to end the bulk collection legislatively, preparing to fight a president who had yet to clearly indicate which side of the argument he would pick.
Representative James Sensenbrenner is an author of a bill to end bulk phone data collection, known as the USA Freedom Act. Confident that it would receive the backing of his fellow lawmakers, he said “If brought up for a vote it would pass with broad bipartisan support”.
Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican who led a revolt in July to stop the mass surveillance, that came close to succeeding, said Obama “will not get away with mere cosmetic changes to the government’s domestic spying program”.
But the proposal to strip the NSA of its databases has hit a snag of opposition from telecommunications firms, who do not want to be required to hold customer data for longer than their current average 18 month maximum, fearing legal and financial liability. Outsourcing, civil libertarians argue, would outsource mass surveillance, rather than end it.
Privacy advocates fear that a new expansive phone records database would create a large honeypot of private data that would be difficult to keep secure from hackers and commercial interests.
I know we’ve all had enough, but if we don’t act, will get more. For now I’d like to welcome the NSA analysts listening to this program and invite them to visit daypage.net to analyze all the other day pages. DayPages are a production of Radio InfoWeb Mornings, and heard on the Liberty Radio Network. The NSA is watching to make sure that you tune in to the next DayPage.