Government Shouldn't Wait on Ending Phone Surveillance, PCLOB Chairman Says
The executive and legislative branches have no compelling reason not to halt the bulk collection of phone metadata, done under Patriot Act Section 215, said Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Chairman David Medinein in a Lawfare blog post Friday.…
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“Last month, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences released a report in which it determined that ‘[t]here is no software technique that will fully substitute for bulk collection’ of signals intelligence and, finding more drawbacks than benefits to having phone companies instead of the government hold call records, recommended focusing instead on use controls of collected information to address privacy concerns of people who are not the targets of surveillance,” Medine said. “The NRC’s conclusion about the relative merits of aggregated data pooling generally should not deter the President from terminating the 215 telephony metadata program on his own or Congress from passing the USA FREEDOM Act.” The USA Freedom Act was surveillance overhaul legislation that stalled in the Senate last fall.