Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Report on NSA Surveillance Illegalities Now Available

The
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released this
afternoon its report on the National Security Agency’s bulk
telephone surveillance program. A quick perusal suggests that the
report could have a tremendously positive impact in the current
debate over reining in the national security surveillance state. I
have obviously not had time to read it all yet, but here is a
particularly choice passage: 

Beyond such individual privacy intrusions, permitting the
government to routinely collect the calling records of the entire
nation fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the state
and its citizens. With its powers of compulsion and criminal
prosecution, the government poses unique threats to privacy when it
collects data on its own citizens. Government collection of
personal information on such a massive scale also courts the
ever-present danger of “mission creep.” An even more compelling
danger is that personal information collected by the government
will be misused to harass, blackmail, or intimidate, or to single
out for scrutiny particular individuals or groups. To be clear, the
Board has seen no evidence suggesting that anything of the sort is
occurring at the NSA and the agency’s incidents of non-compliance
with the rules approved by the FISC have generally involved
unintentional misuse. Yet, while the danger of abuse may seem
remote, given historical abuse of personal information by the
government during the twentieth century, the risk is more than
merely theoretical.

Moreover, the bulk collection of telephone records can be
expected to have a chilling effect on the free exercise of speech
and association, because individuals and groups engaged in
sensitive or controversial work have less reason to trust in the
confidentiality of their relationships as revealed by their calling
patterns. Inability to expect privacy vis-à-vis the government in
one’s telephone communications means that people engaged in wholly
lawful activities—but who for various reasons justifiably do not
wish the government to know about their communications—must either
forgo such activities, reduce their frequency, or take costly
measures to hide them from government surveillance. The telephone
records program thus hinders the ability of advocacy organizations
to communicate confidentially with members, donors, legislators,
whistleblowers, members of the public, and others. For similar
reasons, awareness that a record of all telephone calls is stored
in a government database may have debilitating consequences for
communication between journalists and sources.

Could it be “game over” for domestic surveillance and
NSA stooges in Congress?  I will say it again, “Thank
You Edward Snowden.”  For more background see my blogpost,
“NSA
Telephone Spying Is Illegal and Useless, Asserts Obama’s Privacy
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.”