Obama Wants to Shift Surveillance Metadata Storage to Phone Companies
President Barack Obama wants to end the Patriot Act Section 215 phone surveillance program as it exists now, he confirmed Thursday. In a January speech (WID Jan 21 p1), Obama asked the Justice Department and intelligence officials to draft a plan to move the bulk collected phone metadata away from the hands of the government to either the phone companies or a third party. He asked for such a suggested path by this Friday, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order authorizing phone surveillance expires.
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"I have decided that the best path forward is that the government should not collect or hold this data in bulk,” Obama said in a statement (http://1.usa.gov/1j940YO). “Instead, the data should remain at the telephone companies for the length of time it currently does today. The government would obtain the data pursuant to individual orders from the [FISC] approving the use of specific numbers for such queries, if a judge agrees based on national security concerns.” Legislation will be necessary, Obama said.
Both the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees plan hearings on the proposal, their leaders have said. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she intends her hearing to also to focus on legislation introduced this week by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., that is similar to the president’s plan. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., refrained from fully endorsing Obama’s approach and instead pointed to his own bill, the USA Freedom Act. “The President’s proposal is promising, but true reform must be comprehensive,” Leahy said. “The strong bipartisan support for the USA FREEDOM Act demonstrates that we must end the bulk collection of phone records, but we also must ensure that other authorities are not used for similar types of bulk collection. And we must reform other government surveillance authorities, such as National Security Letters and the FISA Amendments Act.”
Obama “has to stop sending conflicting messages to the American people” about his position on the NSA’s bulk collection of phone metadata or other issues, said Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, during a committee meeting Thursday. As recently as last week, Obama said in a meeting that he wanted to end government storage of bulk phone metadata, he said in a meeting that “he believed that the bulk collection of this metadata was necessary to our national security,” Grassley said. “Now we are being told otherwise.” The shift in Obama’s position on metadata “is why I think he’s being questioned so much by the public,” Grassley said.
"The telephone companies and providers would be compelled to provide technical assistance to ensure that the records can be queried and produced, and the results are transmitted to the government in a usable format and in a timely way,” a senior administration official said during a media call Thursday. CTIA declined comment Thursday but had said after the January speech that it opposes mandates. The government may pay phone companies for complying, the senior administration official added: “I don’t want to prejudge where we will get in our discussions with Congress on this, but I certainly would envision, consistent with what the government does today with respect to compensating phone companies and others for their production of records in response to lawful court process, I think we would see a similar approach.”
"My team has been in touch with key Congressional leadership -- including from the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees -- and we are committed to working with them to see legislation passed as soon as possible,” Obama said. “Given that this legislation will not be in place by March 28 and given the importance of maintaining this capability, I have directed the Department of Justice to seek a 90-day reauthorization of the existing program including the modifications I directed in January.”
Privacy advocates expressed pleasure that Obama would end bulk collection but raised other concerns. The proposal “focuses on only one symptom of the NSA’s overreach rather than promising a cure for the broader problem of bulk data collection,” said the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute Policy Director Kevin Bankston (http://bit.ly/1jSzscs). Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal called it a “disappointing proposal” and limited in its attention to phone metadata. The ACLU also said it’s a “step in the right direction” but not the end, in a statement from Executive Director Anthony Romero (http://bit.ly/1i06Lc7). Several privacy advocates still point to the USA Freedom Act as a superior path.
The White House released a fact sheet accompanying Obama’s statement. It specified that the government would be able to request only phone numbers “two hops” beyond the original number queried. “Absent an emergency situation, the government can query the telephony metadata collected pursuant to the program only after a judge approves the use of specific numbers for such queries based on national security concerns,” the White House said (http://1.usa.gov/1m8nQ6n). ,