Jew World Order

Reuters / Eduardo Muno

​A review group assembled by the White House to recommend changes concerning the United States’ intelligence gathering operations is calling out the Obama administration for not yet halting the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records.

US President Barack Obama could heed a recommendation made one
year ago by its own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
(PCLOB), and end the National Security Agency’s dragnet phone
surveillance program “at any time,” the review group said in an
assessment report published this week. But instead, the White
House continues to let the NSA routinely sweep up metadata
pertaining to millions of calls.

The assessment report, released by PCLOB on
Thursday, comes one year after the group offered recommendations
to the White House concerning Section 215 of the Patriot Act – a
provision that compels telecommunication companies to regularly
supply the NSA with call records collected in bulk from American
customers – and six months after a similar report was published
on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rule, Section 702,
that lets the US government conduct electronic eavesdropping on
the internet.

Yet while PLCOB acknowledges in the assessment that the White
House has accepted the bulk of the 22 recommendations made in the
two reports, not a single suggestion has been fully implemented –
with the exception of one calling on the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, a secretive body that authorizes these types
of wiretaps, “to obtain technical assistance and expand
opportunities for legal input from outside parties.”

According to a statement from the review group that accompanies the
29-page report, a key finding made during its assessment of the
administration’s progress is that the government continues to
collect phone data through Sec. 215 – even though it doesn’t have
to, and, in the board’s opinion, shouldn’t.

“The Administration has not implemented the Board’s
recommendation to halt the NSA’s telephone records program, which
it could do at any time without congressional involvement.
Instead, the Administration has continued the program, with
modifications, while seeking legislation to create a new system
for government access to telephone records under Section
215,” the statement reads in part.

A year ago, PCLOB concluded that the government should end its
bulk phone record collection program due to “constitutional
concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments,” and said
the Sec. 215 program “raises serious threats to privacy and
civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited
value.”

READ MORE: White House releases recommendations for limiting NSA
programs

“The Administration accepted our recommendation in principle.
However, it has not ended the bulk telephone records program on
its own, opting instead to seek legislation to create an
alternative to the existing program,” this week’s report
reads.

A bill that sought to strip from the government its ability to
collect that metadata in bulk, the USA Freedom Act, ultimately
failed to advance in the Senate when it was up for discussion
last November. According to the review group, though, curbing
that collection doesn’t rely squarely on Congress.

“It should be noted that the Administration can end the bulk
telephone records program at any time, without congressional
involvement,” the assessment report reads. “While
legislation like the USA FREEDOM Act would be needed to retain
the unique capabilities of the program without collecting
telephone records in bulk, the Board examined those capabilities
and concluded that they have provided only ‘limited value’ in
combatting terrorism.”

“After scrutinizing classified materials regarding cases in
which the program was used, and questioning the Intelligence
Community about those cases, the Board explained that ‘we have
not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United
States in which the telephone records program made a concrete
difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism
investigation.’”

David Medine, the chairman of PCLOB, told Spencer Ackerman at
the Guardian that he believes a better
solution would involve letting the telecoms log and maintain
those records, as recommended in the failed Freedom Act.

“At some point, you have to draw the line and say you have to
act on your own, because this program isn’t particularly
effective. A better alternative is to go to the phone companies
on a case-by-case basis,” Medine said.

“It’s now well past time for the administration to have
developed alternative procedures and alternative relationships
with the telephone companies to stop the daily flow of data to
the government,” added James Dempsey, another PCLOB member.

Speaking to the National Journal, PCLOB’s chairman suggested
that a rapidly approaching expiration date concerning Sec. 215
could cancel the metadata collection program automatically if the
White House doesn’t rein it in sooner. Amendments to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, are set to roll off the
rule books if Congress can’t agree to renew or revamp them by a
June 1 deadline, at which point Sec. 215 could see its demise.

“We’ve gone through a year, and the program is still
running,” Medine said. “Congress may renew the whole
provision. What we’re effectively saying is, that shouldn’t
decide how the administration should handle the 215
program.”

Details about the government’s reliance on Sec. 215 to collect
metadata from the phone calls of Americans were revealed in June
2013 by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who supplied
national security reporters with a trove of classified documents
detailing the intelligence community’s classified surveillance
programs. Snowden, 31, currently resides in Russia and is wanted
in the US for felony charges of theft and espionage.