Civil Libertarians on NSA Review Panel Recommendations

The
Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies
report, Liberty and
Security in a Changing World, is now online. One of the
chief recommendations is that the NSA no longer be allowed to
monitor the phone calls of nearly every American. However, the
panel did suggest that private companies hold that data which could
be queried later by the NSA. Below are some preliminary assessments
of it from various civil liberties advocates:

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“The president’s panel agreed with the growing consensus that
mass electronic surveillance has no place in American society,” EFF
Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl said. “The review board floats a
number of interesting reform proposals, and we’re especially happy
to see them condemn the NSA’s attacks on encryption and other
security systems people rely upon.  But we’re
disappointed that the recommendations suggest a path to continue
untargeted spying.  Mass surveillance is still heinous, even
if private company servers are holding the data instead of
government data centers.“ (emphasis added).

American Civil Liberties Union:

“We welcome this report, which advocates for many of the ACLU’s
positions, including an end to the government’s dragnet collection
of telephone metadata and its undermining of encryption standards,”
said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union. “NSA’s surveillance programs are un-American,
unconstitutional, and need to be reined in. We urge President Obama
to accept his own Review Panel’s recommendations and end these
programs.”

In October, NSA Director Keith Alexander testified
before Congress that stopping the mass surveillance of 
Americans “would result in this nation being attacked.”

Starkly disagreeing with that assertion, Review Group panel
member Michael Morrell
told reporters:

“I do not believe, as a 33-year intelligence officer, that our
recommendations will in any way undermine the capabilities of the
US intelligence community to collect the information it needs to
collect to keep the country safe.”

In his ruling
against the NSA surveillance program on Monday, Federal
District Court Judge Richard Leon wrote:

“The government does not cite a single instance in which
analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an
imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any
objective that was time-sensitive in nature. I have serious doubts
about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of
conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving
imminent threats of terrorism.”

It’s official. A lot of Congressoids are against domestic
spying; the judiciary has ruled against it; and now the executive
branch represented by Obama’s handpicked review panel is
(partially) against it. Time to stop. And, oh yes, thank
you Edward Snowden.