The National Security Agency is collecting information on millions of private phone conversations made by Verizon customers across the U.S. The information was made public this week after a secret court order was obtained and published by The Guardian newspaper.
The order has been supported by the Obama administration, which calls phone-record monitoring “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats.” It is a practice rooted in anti-terror surveillance techniques popularized by the Bush administration under the 2001 Patriot Act.
The top secret court order was granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is valid until July 19, allowing the NSA access to “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
Authorities also have access to call information, including the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity number, and “comprehensive communication routing information.” Administration officials told reporters in Washington that the court order does not allow the NSA to “listen in on anyone’s telephone calls.”
Some privacy advocates see the collection of metadata as a highly invasive form of surveillance. By obtaining these records, the NSA is able to learn the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates, the duration of their conversations, and their location at the time of the correspondence.
The announcement has been lambasted by civil liberties groups and citizens who believe that it violates citizens’ right to privacy, as protected by the Fourth Amendment.
“From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming,” said Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director. “It’s a program in which millions of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents. It’s analogous to the FBI stationing an agent outside every home in the country to track who goes in and who comes out. It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies.”
It’s not clear whether other major cell phone companies have been providing similar data, although the announcement does offer a possible explanation as to why some U.S. senators have raised general concern over the Obama administration’s surveillance policies.
For the past two years, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) have been advising the public that the U.S. government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
Because the activities are classified, the senators — both members of the Intelligence Committee — could not speak specifically about the telephone surveillance.
Most members of the Senate have previously supported broad executive surveillance powers. The U.S. Senate easily approved a five-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in December 2012, allowing federal agencies to continue conducting warrantless wiretapping.
The FISA program was created in the 1978 but the powers of its secret court were greatly expanded by the Patriot Act, enacted in 2001. The FISA court can approve surveillance as long as one of the parties is believed to be outside the U.S.
The Obama administration continues some intelligence-gathering practices established by the Bush administration in the post-September 11 era. One controversial provision of the 2001 Patriot Act empowers the intelligence community to conduct roving wiretaps in which authorities can track a target, even if the individual attempts to change locations or means of communication.
The Patriot Act also permits authorities to search through business records in pursuit of terrorists. The FBI and other intelligence agencies can obtain records or other “tangible things” deemed relevant to a security investigation from businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations. The business-records provision is concerning for some senators who believe that it could lead to an overreach by the intelligence community.
“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” said Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in 2011. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”
The intelligence-gathering techniques authorized by the Patriot Act were continued under President Obama. Congress passed legislation in 2011 extending their use until 2015.