When Alberto Gonzalez testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he intimated that there might be other NSA counter-terrorism programs beyond the domestic wiretapping program that was of controversy.
It turns out that that is the case.
USAT is reporting on a program that has collected domestic phone records for analysis by the NSA: NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
Of the major phone companies, only Qwest refused to cooperate. The program was started soon after 911 and seems to lack a solid legal foundation.
The basic upshot is as follows:
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
This is information that the government ought only have via court order when their is probable cause to investigate a crime.
And the President has much to answer for here, as he had justified the controversial wiretapping program on the grounds that one side of the call was international. This program, however, is wholly domestic:
The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA’s efforts to create a national call database.In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”
As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.
One wonders what other undisclosed programs might exist.
The argument will no doubt be that all they are doing is looking for patterns that will help them catch al Qaeda (along with the asinine “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, what are you worried about” routine). However, the notion that the government should have the right, sans court order, to gather millions upon millions of phone records from law-abiding citizens is unacceptable.
Further, once the government has information of this nature in a database, the potential for abuse is large.
God bless Qwest and their management for resisting the request:
Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events.
Two things strike me here. First, it is clear that the main way by which the NSA was able to convince the other carriers to hand over the records was post-911 fear. Government policy by fear is problematic, to say the least. Second, any time a governmental agency refuses to go through proper channels to authorize its behavior, then the behavior in question should be stopped.
Again: kudos to Qwest.
And, no doubt, this is only the beginning on this story.
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May 11th, 2006 at 9:10 am
[...] ven Taylor, a pretty conservative political scientist, sums up my concerns with this program succinctly: However, the notion that the government should have the righ [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I wish I could say I was shocked. This is a rogue administration and has been from the very start.
I am sure there is much more, and there is only one way we will know for sure…
May 11th, 2006 at 10:03 am
I heartily disagree. This is a valuable tool that does not violate privacy since the content of the call is ignored. Any further investigation (if there is any) would then require more oversight. Do we know if the program yielded more investigations and how were they handled?
As for Qwest, they have already had a number of executives convicted for fraud so I give them no credit. The other phone companies cooperated so apparently their lawyers saw things differently.
May 11th, 2006 at 10:05 am
[...] atching on. Better late than never. So, what, exactly, is the reason not to impeach? h/t Steven. Propagation: No seeds sprouted » RSS feed f [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Steve:
Other problems Qwest may have had are irrelevant.
And while the content of the call is certainly private, what business is it of the government’s as to whom I call?
A major part of the problem is that we don’t know what is going on in the program, or in others.
May 11th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Are you kidding me? prosecuters in every state gather this information for cases and use it. If our government is looking for patterns of phone usage to not have another 9-11 so be it. Or to you have something to fear? Get real its 2006 not 1886, find something else to berate ie the Democrats using ss#’s to pull up people’s credit reports and so much more that has nothing to do with our safety.
May 11th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Erin,
Prosecutors who collect phone records do so under power of a warrant and the data is collected because there is sufficient suspicion of a crime.
This is the indiscriminate collection of information about private citizens that has the potential to be abused.
May 11th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Could we liken this to a policeman sitting outside a known drug dealers house checking the number of cars that come and go to establish a pattern of possible drug sales? Once establishing a pattern the next step in law enforcement action would proceed. I see no violation of privacy in merely counting cars or counting phone calls.
My statement concerning Qwest and it’s own scandals are somewhat irrelevant until combined with granting them kudos for the choice of action they took. Qwest has essentially been a corrupt company and I doubt this was a stand on principal as much as a cover our hind end policy.
The sensitive nature of intelligence gathering means that we may not know all there is to know about this program. For the intelligence to be of value it must remain secret. Our system provides congressional oversight to ensure safeguards. The bipartisan review would likely expose any real abuses quickly. Until we know more about the oversight process I think our criticism should be withheld.
Like the various leaks around Washington why was this out in the press rather than going through congress? Why doesn’t the leaker go through official channels rather than USA today?
I would venture a guess that congressional oversight has been going on and the program deemed worthwhile and appropriate.
Most importantly having this debate helps us all establish what is appropriate for our government in this war on terrrorists.
May 11th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
The appropriate analogy is not sitting outside one alleged drug dealer’s house. Thwe appropriat analogy is monitroing all the movement of all the cars in a city, state or country to find the patterns to catch the drug dealer. That is substantially different, as it entails the surveillance of both the potential criminal and a whole slew of other people.
And the main problem is, I am not convinced it is likely being overseen properly by Congress. The White House seems to think that it doesn’t have to deal with checks and balances if it is fighting terrorism (see the NSA wiretap situation).
And we wouldn’t know about the program, nor would anyone being asking about oversight without the leak.
May 11th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
[...] NSA. Others: Confederate Yankee. Outside the Beltway. JustOneMinute. Right Wing Nut House. PoliBlog. Stop the ACLU. The American Mind. The Washington Monthly. Volokh Conspiracy. The Strata-Sphere. Mich [...]
May 11th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Is this program different from the Echelon program reported some years back?
This is not meant as an agenda-driven question nor does the date of the existence of this program make it right or wrong.
May 11th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Once again you are advocating a law enforcement approach to the problem: investigating the crime after it has occurred. We don’t want the crime to occur. Therefore our goal should be the generation of “dots” that can be connected. Our previous approach with regards to terrorism has been to hope that we would get lucky and stumble onto a plot rather than actively seeking out information that would help us identify plots. But in reality the reason why this program was necessary after 9/11 is that we simply weren’t sure who we have let into the country over the years and what their intentions are because we simply haven’t been selective enough. Had we been more selective and strict over the last couple of decades, none of this would be necessary.
May 11th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
#12 “Had we been more selective and strict over the last couple of decades, none of this would be necessary.”
Well, I don’t disagree with your point but that statement is perhaps a bit strong. Russia and China are a lot more authoritarian and regimented. They do a much more thorough job of keeping tabs. Yet they have been known to have terror outbreaks anyway.
May 11th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Well that stems from two problems. One is the fact that they are oppressive states that suppress dissent. Two is that the countries governments are dominated by one ethnic minority and rule lands of other ethnic groups harshly, including land belonging ethnic groups that are Muslim. Their problem is essentially domestic, not international.
But that is not to say that we have don’t have a purely domestic terrorism in the US. But we fought those threats in a time when mobility and communications ability of terror groups was far more circumscribed and we were able to grind them away. Currently we have a problem with foreign groups who plan on carrying operations out in the US but do much of their planning and coordination overseas beyond the reach of US law enforcement. After 9/11, it should have become crystal clear that we can not rely on foreign intelligence services to provide timely and detailed intelligence on what these groups might be planning to do. We must create additional lines of defense here domestically to detect and hinder their activities.
But we should also be trying to assess what the actual threat level is here in the US. We don’t have a problem like Europe has for sure, and programs like this can help us determine how far we are from that situation. With that data, you can pare down some of the post 9/11 measures, including this program, if the evidence suggests they are not necessary.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:14 am
The NSA Code
The NSA contends that they are simply looking for “patterns.” In fact, the kinds of patterns NSA analysts are looking for may be the key to winning the War on Terror.
May 12th, 2006 at 6:57 am
I think those arguing in support of the NSA program are missing the larger point. If this so-called pattern analysis is so important, why not get a warrant? After all, FISA warrants are pretty quick and we are talking a long term program, so it would not be adversely affected by the 72 hours needed to put it under judicial oversight.
For the Posters who argue that fighting terrorism is a war and that a crime-fighting approach is ineffective, I guess I would ask the following: If we are in a Global War on Terror, what defines victory? How will we know when we can have our full civil liberties restored?
I find the whole GWOT concept extremely Orwellian in philosophy and inadequate in terms of strategy. Orwellian because it implies a conflict without end, thus justifying dictatorial powers in the Presidency. Inadequate because it is so amorphous that we find our security forces trolling our American Idol voting patterns rather than hunting for the 9/11 terrorists.
‘Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.’ William Pitt