Debate renewed on privacy, security
What was thought to be domestic overreach by the George W. Bush administration in the name of national security now appears to be standard practice under the Obama administration.
On Wednesday, London’s Guardian newspaper reported on a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, itself a secret panel, authorizing the National Security Agency to collect the telephone records of Verizon’s U.S. customers, potentially 121 million subscribers.
The three-month order, permitted through the Patriot Act, has been regularly renewed. It covers the phone numbers and locations of both parties on the call, its time and duration, and what are called “unique identifiers.”
The program began at least seven years ago, according to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, putting its origins in the Bush administration. For a change, it appears that key members of Congress had been briefed on the program — at least none of them appeared surprised. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the program was necessary for homeland safety and that privacy rights were carefully protected.
Her House counterpart, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said the records had thwarted a “significant” terrorist attack on the United States a few years ago, but did not give details.
The government has collected an immense amount of information, and the temptation to broaden its use may become too great. Why not, some agent might ask, use it to detect crimes like money laundering and financial fraud? Having gone that far, why not use it to track individuals holding suspect political views? That has happened before in our history.
For the moment, the response of the White House, congressional leaders and NSA spooks is: “Trust us.”
But that may be harder to do in light of a report by The Washington Post Thursday that the National Security Agency and FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.
The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy, according to the Post.
For now, Americans may have no choice but to trust. But we should not forget Thomas Jefferson’s admonition: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”