NSA surveillance order set to expire today (UPDATE)
Posted by: Jon Ben-Mayor on 07/19/2013 03:49 PM
[
Comments
]
The NSA might lose the ability to collect the phone records of US citizens if the Obama Administration does not act decisively before this evening in order to keep the controversial directive in place.
**Update** The Obama administration has indeed renewed the directive allowing the National Security Agency to regularly collect the phone records of millions of Americas as per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Should the White House not seek to renew a top-secret directive from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court before 5 p.m. EST on Friday, the government’s ability to compel telecoms for private records will expire.
The routine collection of phone records — so-called “metadata” containing logs and other call-specific statistics — was the first NSA surveillance program exposed by Snowden. The 30-year-old former systems administrator provided the Guardian newspaper with documents suggesting the NSA is “is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon,” and an early June exposé they published quickly made that conduct a regular topic of conversation.
That blanketing court order, dated April 25, gave the government the unlimited authority to collect telephony metadata from Verizon up until Friday, July 19. House Intelligence Committee lawmakers Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) issued a statement in the interim admitting “these authorities [are] reviewed and approved by federal judges every 90 days,” and a Washington Post article published less than a week after the first Guardian piece acknowledged that 14 judges have reviewed the operations of the program since 2006.
In the wake of an unprecedented public backlash and condemnation across the globe, though, the Obama administration may move to not reauthorize the FISA order before it expires.
Spencer Ackerman, a national security writer for the Guardian who’s worked with Snowden’s leaks since they first surfaced, wrote Thursday that the White House is refusing to say whether it will seek to renew that FISA order, adding that officials reached for comment declined to discuss how they’d handle the looming deadline.
“On Thursday, the administration would not answer a question first posed by the Guardian six days ago about its intentions to continue, modify or discontinue the Verizon bulk-collection order,” wrote Ackerman. The White House, he wrote, referred queries to the Justice Department. The NSA, a FISA Court spokesperson and the office of the Director of National Intelligence all either refused to comment or differed to acknowledge their request altogether.
We will have to wait and see what the decision will be, or will we? Almost forgot all those opposed to the NSA surveillance step outside around 5:42 EDT please and look up, thanks!
**Update** The Obama administration has indeed renewed the directive allowing the National Security Agency to regularly collect the phone records of millions of Americas as per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Should the White House not seek to renew a top-secret directive from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court before 5 p.m. EST on Friday, the government’s ability to compel telecoms for private records will expire.
The routine collection of phone records — so-called “metadata” containing logs and other call-specific statistics — was the first NSA surveillance program exposed by Snowden. The 30-year-old former systems administrator provided the Guardian newspaper with documents suggesting the NSA is “is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon,” and an early June exposé they published quickly made that conduct a regular topic of conversation.
That blanketing court order, dated April 25, gave the government the unlimited authority to collect telephony metadata from Verizon up until Friday, July 19. House Intelligence Committee lawmakers Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) issued a statement in the interim admitting “these authorities [are] reviewed and approved by federal judges every 90 days,” and a Washington Post article published less than a week after the first Guardian piece acknowledged that 14 judges have reviewed the operations of the program since 2006.
In the wake of an unprecedented public backlash and condemnation across the globe, though, the Obama administration may move to not reauthorize the FISA order before it expires.
Spencer Ackerman, a national security writer for the Guardian who’s worked with Snowden’s leaks since they first surfaced, wrote Thursday that the White House is refusing to say whether it will seek to renew that FISA order, adding that officials reached for comment declined to discuss how they’d handle the looming deadline.
“On Thursday, the administration would not answer a question first posed by the Guardian six days ago about its intentions to continue, modify or discontinue the Verizon bulk-collection order,” wrote Ackerman. The White House, he wrote, referred queries to the Justice Department. The NSA, a FISA Court spokesperson and the office of the Director of National Intelligence all either refused to comment or differed to acknowledge their request altogether.
We will have to wait and see what the decision will be, or will we? Almost forgot all those opposed to the NSA surveillance step outside around 5:42 EDT please and look up, thanks!
Comments
