Specific Surveillance, General Privacy Reform Should Come Out of Reports on Prism, Advocates Say
Privacy advocates are calling for policy changes on surveillance and privacy after news reports last week that the National Security Agency (NSA) has operated a program since 2007, named Prism, that allows the agency access to user data controlled by major online service providers, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple. The program is operated under the FISA Amendment Act (FAA), which passed last year and updated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to April documents cited in the news reports. Thursday’s reports on the program from The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/14ClB0z) and The Guardian (http://bit.ly/1baaUGj) came after Wednesday’s reports that the NSA compels Verizon to release to the agency data on customers’ call logs (CD June 7 p1).
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The Internet surveillance taking place under Prism “does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States,” President Barack Obama told reporters in San Jose, Calif., Friday morning. The phone call data collection and Prism programs “make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity” and are “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government,” he said. Obama said he welcomes a debate about finding the “balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy” but views the unauthorized dissemination of classified information as risky. “I don’t welcome leaks, because there’s a reason why these programs are classified,” he said. Most of the companies alleged to be participating in Prism have denied involvement in or knowledge of the program in news reports.
These revelations about the government’s surveillance activities should move the ball forward in policy discussions about electronic privacy and government surveillance, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Policy Analyst Mark Jaycox told us. He pointed to pending legislation such as a bill, S-607, from Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, which would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before they can access emails that have been stored for more than 180 days (CD April 26 p12), and its House companion, which includes protections for geolocation data collected by mobile devices. “This should serve as the catalyst to move these privacy bills forward,” Jaycox said.
Most importantly, the reports demonstrate the need for more oversight into government surveillance programs like Prism, Jaycox said. “We certainly encourage a full scale investigation ... on the egregious policy violations” that innocent Americans have suffered through Prism activities, he said. In a Friday statement (http://bit.ly/13q1tkx), the EFF urged creation of a committee to provide oversight and limitations to the NSA, suggesting it be headed by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., “the two Senators who have been trying to warn the American people about the government[’s] dangerous interpretation of the Patriot Act for years."
Since information about NSA’s phone record collection and Prism program has been made public, “members of Congress are going to be concerned about providing for adequate oversight of surveillance” on the part of the government, Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), told us. Nojeim is also director of the CDT’s Project on Freedom, Security and Technology. Lawmakers’ concern “could help propel legislation unrelated” to the details of NSA’s Prism program, including bills to reform ECPA and bills related to privacy concerns about unmanned aircraft, though the privacy bills are “unrelated in a legal sense” to FAA, he said. “It’s time for a reckoning,” CDT President Leslie Harris said in a statement Friday (http://bit.ly/193DKLR). Harris called for “a sustained investigation into how far these programs reach into the private lives of American citizens."
Attention will likely focus on reconsidering the abilities granted to the government under the FAA in the aftermath of these reports, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us. Laws such as ECPA, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and FAA “are all connected,” and “I certainly would like to see people thinking more broadly” about the concessions American citizens make regarding their privacy for the sake of national security, he said. In addition to reevaluating the laws themselves, lawmakers should investigate how agencies interpret the laws, he continued. Now is also the time to reconsider the five-year extension period for FISA, Wood said. “Maybe we need to think about how long these sunset periods are.” In a Friday statement, Free Press CEO Craig Aaron asked that “the Internet companies we've entrusted with our personal information ... take a stand against government spying.” Additionally he asked that the Obama administration “put a stop to these expansive spying programs and to come clean about any additional surveillance schemes."
Sascha Meinrath, vice president of the New America Foundation and director of its Open Technology Institute, made similar calls in a statement on Friday. The Internet companies allegedly participating in Prism “should be compelled to come clean with their users about how this practice functions and whether they have been turning over private chats, pictures, videos, emails, and connection logs,” he said. The American public should also consider how their members of Congress “should be held accountable for these violations of our 4th Amendment rights” because “many ... knew about this egregious nationwide privacy invasion,” he said.