Ok, so we all know what the big story is that everyone's talking about:
http://www.wired.com/...
The National Security Agency obtained a court order to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers, according to a secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The sweeping order, issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requires Verizon to give the NSA metadata on all calls within the U.S. and between the U.S. and foreign countries on an “ongoing, daily basis” for three months.
The data includes the phone numbers of both parties involved in the calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls. It does not include the name or address of the subscriber or other account information, nor does it allow the content of calls to be recorded and collected. It may, however, include the location of the calls through cell site data.
The classified order was issued to the FBI by the secretive court on April 25 and allows the government to collect data until July 19 and hand it over to the NSA. The order came with a gag requirement that prevents Verizon from disclosing its existence. It covers only Verizon, and it’s not clear if other phone companies received similar orders.
The document reveals for the first time that the NSA is continuing to do massive datamining on millions of U.S. citizens under the Obama administration — a practice that spawned extensive criticism after it was first exposed in 2006 as part of a secret Bush Administration program that began in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The dragnet collection of data would allow the government to build a massive database of transactional records to map connections and relationships between callers. Although Verizon is not required to hand over caller subscriber information under the order, this doesn’t mean the NSA can’t identify the owners of phone numbers on its own. Intelligence and data collected from other sources can help match the names of accountholders to the numbers collected in the sweep.
“From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. “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.” - Wired, 6/5/13
And here's a little more info for you:
http://www.thenation.com/...
This is a stunningly broad order, and there’s every reason to believe that similar orders exist for other phone providers in the United States. Verizon itself is not the focus of the investigation, so Sprint, AT&T and others almost certainly are under similar orders. An expert interviewed by The Washington Post said the order appeared to be a routine ninety-day renewal of what has effectively been a standing order for all such data. In other words, the federal government is apparently sweeping up records on every phone call any of us makes, without any specific basis for suspicion about any of us.
How can it do so? The Supreme Court long ago ruled that such information enjoys no Fourth Amendment protection, on the theory that when one shares information with a third party, one has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” with respect to the government obtaining information from the third party. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has suggested that this doctrine needs to be reconsidered, but until that happens there are no constitutional impediments to such wholesale vacuuming up of data without any individualized basis for suspicion.
Congress has placed some limits on the gathering of such data, but as this order reveals, they are largely meaningless. A controversial provision of the Patriot Act, Section 215, allows the government to demand “business records” from any business, so long as they are “relevant to an authorized investigation…to obtain foreign intelligence information…or to protect against international terrorism.” Section 215 orders are granted in secret, as this one was, and until now little was known about how extensively the government relied upon them, or how “relevant” was interpreted. By this single order, however, the NSA has been given access to records on literally millions of customers, without suspicion about any of them. We don’t know the government’s theory, but it appears that it may be arguing that in order to protect against international terrorism, it is “relevant” to sweep up phone call data about all of us all of the time. - The Nation, 6/6/13
As alarming as this story is, I can't say that I'm surprised. Senator Mark Udall (D. CO) was trying to stop this from happening:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/...
Sen. Mark Udall said Thursday he knew the National Security Agency was broadly securing tens of thousands of Americans’ phone records and “did everything short of leaking classified information” to stop it.
Udall told The Denver Post Thursday, “I did everything in my power to bring attention” to how the federal government was conducting its domestic surveillance program.
Udall is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Two of his colleagues, Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, vice-chair, told CNN they believed in the program because it has saved American lives in countering terrorism.
Udall said the lack of transparency, not the breadth in information collected, is what concerns him the most. - Denver Post, 6/6/13
This is true, Udall, accompanied by Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR), had been warning about such act happening for a while now:
http://www.techdirt.com/...
Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been pressing the feds for a while now concerning their secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which appears to go way, way, way beyond what most in the public believe on simply reading the bill. While the two Senators had put forth an Amendment to explain these secret interpretations when certain provisions of the Patriot Act were up for renewal, they eventually dropped the Amendment in exchange for some other concessions, and a promise that hearings would be held on the issue. Since then, the Senators have continued to press the feds on this issue at every opportunity, leading to quite a lot of doublespeak from the feds.
The latest development is that the two Senators have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, saying that Justice Department representatives are clearly misleading the public about the interpretation of the law. Basically, they say that there's a classified ruling about the interpretation of the law, which some in the government (including Wyden, Udall and Holder) are clearly aware of, but which likely interprets the law vastly differently than most in the public would. And the statements from the Justice Department improperly imply that the details surrounding the law are publicly known -- when they are not.
Shorter version: There's a secret court ruling out there that says the government can spy on a ton of people under the Patriot Act, even though the text of the law seems to suggest otherwise. And the Justice Department is implying that the text of the law is an accurate representation of what the law actually is -- when the secret court ruling seems to say otherwise. - Tech Dirt, 9/22/11
Here's the letter Udall and Wyden sent to Eric Holder:
Udall and Wyden even warned about this again last year:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it.
On Thursday, two of those senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained.
The senators, who also said that Americans would be “stunned” to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”
The Justice Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits — by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union — related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted. - New York Times, 3/16/12
And here's Udall's speech on the Senate floor about the FISA Amendment last December:
With this story blowing up, Senator Udall had this to say:
http://kdvr.com/...
Udall released a statement on the news story — some Washington insiders even speculate that his office may have helped leak the story itself, something Udall’s staff denies.
“While I cannot corroborate the details of this particular report, this sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I’ve said Americans would find shocking,” Udall said.
“As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it’s why I will keep fighting for transparency and appropriate checks on the surveillance of Americans.” - WDVR, 6/5/13
Udall and Wyden represent a new type of Democrat with libertarian leaning views in regards to civil liberties:
http://www.politico.com/...
Wyden, a 64-year-old Oregon Democrat who has served in the Senate since 1996, has in recent years built a reputation for opposing efforts to infringe on civil liberties, including stopping online piracy and the administration’s drone program. And Udall, a 62-year-old Colorado Democrat in his first term, has tried to carve out an image as a more moderate Democrat in line with his state and its libertarian streak.
“Mark Udall, myself and Wyden — look where we come from, we come from different kind of states,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska).
As members of the Intelligence Committee, Udall and Wyden have access to classified information that most members of Congress do not. But it was unclear Thursday just how many lawmakers knew about the extent of the phone records effort before the Guardian’s report, despite claims by Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on Intelligence, and other supporters of the NSA program that every member had been briefed on it.
Marco Rubio (R-FL), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), all members of the Intelligence Committee, claimed to be unaware of the program until The Guardian revealed its existence Wednesday. Members of the Senate Democratic leadership, Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington, also said they weren’t clued in either. - Politico, 6/6/13
Udall's colleague, Senator Jeff Merkley (D. OR), is also a prime example of civil libertarian Democrat:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
"This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans' privacy. I have had significant concerns about the intelligence community over-collecting information about Americans’ telephone calls, emails, and other records and that is why I voted against the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions in 2011 and the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act just six months ago," Merkley said in a statement. "This bulk data collection is being done under interpretations of the law that have been kept secret from the public. Significant FISA court opinions that determine the scope of our laws should be declassified. Can the FBI or the NSA really claim that they need data scooped up on tens of millions of Americans?” - TPM, 6/6/13
The Obama Administration, as well as Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) and ranking Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (R. GA) defended the NSA's actions:
http://thehill.com/...
The Obama administration on Thursday defended the National Security Agency’s use of a secret court order to collect telephone records from millions of Verizon customers.
The NSA has been collecting Verizon's records on millions of calls since April 25, according to the court order.
The information provided to the NSA did not include the content of conversations or customers’ identities but covered telephone numbers used and the length of calls.
An administration official defended the collection of data as a “critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States,” and leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said their colleagues were informed of the practice. They also said it had been continuing since 2007, when it was launched under the Bush administration.
“Everyone’s been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the panel's chairwoman, said she was unsure the extent to which metadata helped foil terrorist plots, but added "that terrorists will come after us if they can and the only thing we have to deter this is good intelligence.”
It is unclear if other carriers were also subject to court orders. The order for Verizon banned the company from discussing the matter, and other carriers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, have not commented. - The Hill, 6/6/13
Right now, it looks like very little will take place:
“I could say right now that we could step right up and change the law, but it’s not likely to happen,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has previously criticized and sought to overhaul the section of the statute now at issue.
That component of the law — Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act — allows the government to secretly obtain approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for “tangible things” related to an authorized terrorism investigation. The Justice Department has repeatedly said the program is subject to court approval — and that lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees are regularly briefed on such activities.
But in the previous Congress, Udall and Wyden repeatedly warned that the secret court had expansively interpreted the section of the law and effectively given the administration an array of powers Congress never intended.
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the PATRIOT Act,” the duo wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in March 2012. “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.” - Politico, 6/6/13
Please do contact the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and express your outrage over this and demand that action be taken:
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA): (202) 224-3841
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D. WV): (202) 224-6472
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D. MD): (202) 224-4654
Senator Mark Warner (D. VA): (202) 224-2023
Senator Martin Heinrich (D. NM): (202) 224-5521
Senator Angus King (I. ME): (202) 224-5344
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R. GA): (202) 224-3521
Senator Richard Burr (R. NC): (202) 224-3154
Senator James Risch (R. ID): (202) 224-2752
Senator Dan Coats (R. IN): (202) 224-5623
Senator Marco Rubio (R. FL): (202) 224-3041
Senator Susan Collins (R. ME): (202) 224-2523
Senator Tom Coburn (R. OK): (202) 224-5754
I thanks Senators Udall and Wyden for speaking out and for being long time defenders of civil liberties. I've written about Udall's record on civil liberties before, check it out:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Udall is up for re-election next year. Lets make sure he stays in the Senate because we need more men like him:
https://secure.actblue.com/...