Court renews NSA phone program
Court renews NSA phone program
By Julian Hattem - 06/20/14 05:38 PM EDT
The federal court overseeing the country’s spy agencies
renewed an order Friday allowing the National Security Agency to collect
Americans’ phone records.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s renewal of
the contested program, authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, comes
as lawmakers continue to debate reform legislation.
“Given that legislation has not yet been enacted, and
given the importance of maintaining the capabilities of the Section 215
telephony metadata program, the government has sought a 90-day reauthorization
of the existing program,” the Justice Department and Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a joint statement.
The NSA’s bulk collection of phone "metadata"
such as which numbers people dial and how long they talk was one of the most
controversial programs revealed by Edward Snowden last summer. The program
requires renewal by the secretive spy court every 90 days.
Some privacy advocates have urged the Obama
administration not to ask for reauthorization while Congress debates a measure
to effectively end the program.
The program is “not effective,” “unconstitutional” and
“has been misused,” more than two-dozen groups wrote in a letter this week.
Administration officials have said that the program is
necessary to track terrorists and foreign agents and have rejected calls to end
or significantly reform the program without legislation from Congress.
The program’s renewal, which was officially issued on
Thursday but unclassified on Friday, expires on Sept. 12.
The House last month passed the USA Freedom Act to end
the phone records program, but that bill is still working its way through the
Senate. Multiple reform advocates have worried that it does not go far enough.
The bill would end the NSA program and require government
agents to get a court order before searching private phone companies’
storehouses of phone records, a move endorsed by President Obama earlier this
year.
“Overall, the bill’s significant reforms would provide the
public greater confidence in our programs and the checks and balances in the
system, while ensuring our intelligence and law enforcement professionals have
the authorities they need to protect the Nation,” the Justice Department and
ODNI explained.
Critics on both sides of the aisle, however, have worried
that compromise language in the version passed by the House could still allow
NSA agents to grab vast amounts of records in one sweep, such as those of every
resident in a single ZIP code or all subscribers of a particular phone company
like Verizon.
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